Moxie Marlinspike

00:01[music] Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. TRAIN BY DAY. JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY UH, so like we're going to just sit here and talk for a long time. Yeah, we were started right now. We already started. It has begun. Yes. [laughter] What was your question though? I was going to ask, you know, like what if something comes up, you know, like, you know, you need to like pee or something. Oh, you can totally do that. Yeah, we'll just pause and just run out pee. That happens. Don't sweat it. All right. I want you to be comfortable. Have you ever done a podcast before? First time. Really? First time. Um, so tell me how where Signal came from. What What was the impetus? What was how did it get started? It's a long story. It's okay. We got time. We got plenty of time. We got [laughter] time. Uh, okay. Well, You know, I think ultimately what we're

00:59trying to do with Signal is um stop mass surveillance to bring some normality to the internet and to uh explore a different way of developing technology that might ultimately serve all of us better. We should tell people maybe people are just tuning in. Signal is an app that is uh explain how it works and what what it does. I use it. It's uh it's a messaging app. It's a messaging app. Yeah. Yeah. Fundamentally, it's just a messaging app. lofty aspirations. Yeah. Uh yeah, it's a messaging app. Um but it's um somewhat different from the the way the rest of technology works because um it uh is encrypted. So um you know uh if typically you know if you want to send somebody a message uh I think most people's expectation is that when they write a message and they you know press send that the people who can see that message are the person who

01:53wrote the message and the intended recipient but that's not actually the case. uh there's you know tons of people who are in between who are monitoring these things who are collecting data information and signal is different because uh we've designed it so that we don't have access to uh that information. So when you send an SMS that is the least secure of all messages. So, if you have an Android phone and you use a standard messaging app and you send a message to one of your friends, that is the least of all it comes to when it comes to security, right? That's uh yeah, it's a low bar. That's that's the low bar. And then iPhone, what is this? Signalite showing it. Yeah. So, iPhones use iMessage, which is slightly more secure, but it gets uploaded to the cloud and it's a part of their iCloud service. So, it goes to some servers and then goes to the other

02:52person. It's encrypted along the way, but it's still it can be intercepted. Yeah. I mean, okay. So, there's uh like Jeff Bezos's situation. Uh yeah, like Jeff Bezos's situation. Exactly. Yeah. There's like fundamentally there's two ways to think about uh security. One is uh like computer security. Uh this idea that we'll somehow make computers secure. We'll put information on the computers and then we'll prevent other people from accessing those computers. And that is like a losing strategy that people have been losing for 30 years. You know, uh you information ends up on a computer somewhere and it ends up compromised in the end. The other way to think about security is information security where you secure the information itself that you don't have to worry about the security of the computers. You could have some computers

03:31in the cloud somewhere. Information is flowing through them and people can compromise compromise those things and it doesn't really matter because the information itself is encrypted. Um and so you know things like SMS um you know the iMessage cloud backups um most other messengers Facebook Messenger all that stuff you know um they're relying on this computer security model um and that uh ends up disappointing people in the end. M and so you why did you guys create it like what what was unsatisfactory about the other options that were available? Well, because the way the internet works today is like insane. Uh you know that uh you know fundamentally I feel like um private communication is important because I think that change happens in private. Um everything that is fundamentally decent today uh started out as something that was a socially

04:24unacceptable idea at the time. Uh you look at things like you know obvious things that abolition of slavery, legalization of marijuana, legalization of samesex marriage, uh even you know constructing the declaration of independence. Those are all things that required a space for people to process ideas outside the context of everyday life. And um those spaces don't exist on the internet today. And I think it's kind of crazy the way the internet works today. you know that like if you imagined um you know every moment that you were talking to somebody in real life there was somebody there just with a clipboard a stranger taking notes about what you said that would change the character of your conversations uh and I think that in some ways like we're living through a shortage of brave or bold or courageous ideas in part because people don't have

05:21the space to process what's happening in their lives outside of the context of everyday interactions. You know, that's a really good way to put it because you got to give people a chance to think things through. But if you do that publicly, they're not going to they're going to sort of like like basically what you see on Twitter, you know, if you stray from what is considered to be the acceptable norm or the current ideology or what whatever you're supposed to whatever opinions you're supposed to have on a certain subject, you get attacked ruthlessly. So, so you see a lot of selfcensorship and you also see a lot of virtue signaling where people sort of pretend that they espouse a certain series of ideas because that'll get them some, you know, some social cred. Yeah. Uh, exactly. I think that communication in those environments is

06:15performative. You know, you're either performing for an angry mob, you're performing for advertisers, you're performing for, you know, the governments that are watching. And I think also the ideas that make it through are kind of tainted as a result, you know, that like uh did you watch any of the like the online hearing stuff that was happening over co uh you know where like uh city councils and stuff were having their hearings online? No, I did not. Uh it was kind of interesting to me because it's like um you know they can't meet in person so they're doing it online and uh that means that the public comment period was also online you know and so it used to be that like you know if you go to a city council meeting uh they have a period of public comment where you know people could just stand up and say what they think you know

06:59and like ordinarily it's like oh you got to go to city hall you got to like wait in line you got to sit there you know but then when it's on Zoom it's just sort of like anyone can just show up at on the Zoom you know they just dial in and they're just like here's what I think you know and Uh, you know, it was kind of interesting because particularly, uh, when a lot of the police brutality stuff was happening in Los Angeles, I was I was watching those city council hearings and, you know, people were just like, you know, you know, they were just calling, you know, be like, "Fuck you. I yield the rest of my time. [ __ ] you." You know, like it was [laughter] just like uh really brutal and uh not undeservedly so. And uh you know what was interesting to me was just watching the the politicians basically you know uh who just had to sit there and just

07:41they were just like take it you know and then it was just like you know you get three minutes and then there's someone else who get you know they're just like okay and now we'll hear from you know like and you know watching that you sort of realize that it's like um to be a politician you have to just sort of fundamentally not really care what people think of you you know uh you have to fundamentally uh just be comfortable sitting, you know, and having people yell at you, you know, for three minute in three-minute increments for an hour or whatever, you know. And so it seems like what we've sort of done is like bred these people who are willing to do that, you know, and in some ways that's like a useful characteristic, but in other ways that's the characteristic of a psychopath, you know. Yes. And yes, and I think you know what

08:25we're seeing is that that also extends outside of those environments that like to do anything ambitious today requires that you just are comfortable with that kind of um feedback. Like Trump's tweets, if you watch, you know, if you look at Twitter and look at any of Trump's tweets, when he tweets, watch what people say. It's ruthless. They go crazy. They go so hard on them. So, I'm assuming he doesn't read them. I'm assuming he just or maybe he does and just doesn't say anything, but he he doesn't go back and forth with people at least. No, but and I'm I I think, you know, Trump is perfectly capable of just not caring. You know, there's like people like, you know, Garrison is just like, "Yeah, whatever. What you know, I'm the best." They don't, you know, and like that's um you know, that's politics. But I think you know the danger is when that uh you

09:17know to do anything ambitious you know outside of politics or whatever you know requires that you're capable of just not caring you know what people think or whatever uh because everything is happening in public. I think you made a really good point in that change comes from people discussing things privately because you have to it's a you have to be able to take a chance. You have to be daring and you have to be able to confide in people and you have to be able to say, "Hey, um, this is not right and we're going to do something about it." If you do that publicly, the powers that be that do not want change in any way, shape, or form, they'll they'll come down on you. I mean, this is essentially what Edward Snowden was warning everyone about when he decided to go public with all this NSA information. He was saying, "Look, look, we this is not what we signed up

10:08for. you like someone's constantly monitoring your emails, constantly listening to phone calls. Like this is not this mass surveillance thing. It's very bad for just the culture of free expression, just our ability to have ideas and to be able to share them back and forth and vet them out. It's very bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think when you look at the the history of that kind of surveillance, there are a few interesting inflection points. You know, like at the beginning of um you know, the internet as we know it in like the early to mid '9s, um there were these like DoD efforts to do mass surveillance, you know, um and um they were sort of open about what they were doing. Uh uh and you know, one of them was this program called total information awareness. Uh and uh it was they were trying to start this office I think called the total awareness office

10:58or something within the DoD. And the idea was like they're just going to like collect information uh on all Americans and everyone's communication and just stockpile it into these uh databases and then they would use that to you know mine those things for information. Uh it was sort of like you know their their uh effort to get in on this at the beginning of the information age. Uh and you know it was ridiculous. You know it's like they called it total information awareness. They had a logo that was like um you know the the pyramid with the eye on top of it. Oh yeah. This is this is their logo. God [laughter] [snorts] the pyramid with the eye like casting a beam on the earth. That bit of Latin there means knowledge is power. Oh wow. And interesting this this program was actually started by uh John Po Dexter of all people who was involved in the Iran

11:43Contra stuff I think. Really? Yeah. Yeah. and he he like went to jail for a second then was pardoned or something. But [laughter] uh so anyway, you know, they're like so [ __ ] up that these people are in charge of anything. I know. But what's also I just kind of comical is that like they were like this is what we're going to do. Look at how crazy this is. Like this this is our plan, you know? And people were like, uh I don't think so. You know, like what year was this? This is like early mid 90s. Look at this. authentication, biometric data, face, fingerprints, gate, iris, your gate. So, they're going to identify people based on the way they walk. I guess your gate is that specific. Um, then automated virtual data repositories, privacy and security. This is fascinating because if you look at I mean, obviously no one thought of cell phones back then.

12:35Exactly. Right. This is so this is like kind of amateur-ish, right? So it's like they're like this is what we're going to do, you know, and people are like, uh, I don't think, you know, even like Congress is like, uh, guys, I don't think we can like approve this, you know, uh, like you need a better logo, you know? [laughter] Yeah, for sure. But it's just this whole flowchart. Is that what this would be? What do you What do you call something like this? What are these called? That works, I guess. Flowchart, I guess. Sort of. Designed to dazzle you into approving their fun. It's like baffling to figure out what it is. Like, first of all, what are all those little color tubes? [laughter] Those little ones, those little cylinders, those are data silos. Data that's the universal. They're all different colors. There's purple ones. What's in the purple data?

13:15Well, gate, that's where gate lives. Yeah, it's all Prince's information. But so, okay, so that you know this this stuff all sort of got shut down, right? You know, like they're like, "Okay, we can't do this." You know? Uh and then instead what ended up happening was like data naturally accumulated in different places you know that um you know like back then if you had been you know what they were trying to do is be like our proposal is that everyone carry a governmentmandated tracking device at all times like what do you guys think you know it'll make us safer you know and people were like no I don't think so you know but instead everyone ended up just carrying cell phones at all times which are tracking your location and reporting them into centralized repositories that government has access to you know and So uh you know this this sort of

13:58like oblique surveillance infrastructure ended up emerging and that was what you know people sort of knew about but you know didn't really know and that's what uh Snowden um revealed was like uh you know instead we don't have this instead it's like all of that all of those things are happening naturally you know your you know gate detection fingerprint you know like all this stuff's happening naturally it's ending up in these uh places and then you know governments are just going to those places and getting the information. Uh and then I think you know the next inflection point was really uh Cambridge Analytica. Um you know that was the moment where I think people were like explain that to people please. Uh Cambridge Analytica was um a uh a firm that was doing um like big data um using big data in order to um forecast and manipulate um

14:52people's opinions. uh and in particular they uh were involved in the 2016 election uh and it was sort of you know so it's like you know what stone revealed was prism which was um the the cooperation between the government and these places where data was naturally accumulating like Facebook Google etc you know and the phone company and uh Cambridge Analytica I think was the moment that people were like oh there's like also sort of like a private version of prison you know that's like not just governments but like the data is out there and other people who are motivated are using that against us, you know. Um and I so I think you know in the beginning it was sort of like oh this could be scary and then it was like um oh but you know we're just using these services and then people were like oh wait the government is you know uh using the data that we're

15:39uh you know sending to these services and then people were like oh wait like anybody can use the data against us and they were like oh sh you know it's like I think things went from like um I don't really have anything to hide to like wait a second these people can predict and influence how I'm going to vote based on what kind of jeans I buy you know uh and you know and then you know sort of where we are today where it's like I think people are also beginning to realize that the companies themselves that are doing this kind of data collection are are also not necessarily acting in our best interests. Yeah, for sure. There there's just too there's also this weird thing that's happening with these companies that are gathering the data whether it's Facebook or Google or I don't think they ever set out to be what they are. They started

16:28out like Facebook for example, we were talking about it before. It was really just sort of like a social networking thing and this was in the early days. It was a business. I don't think anybody ever thought it was going to be something that influences world elections in a staggering way like especially in other parts of the world, you know, where Facebook becomes the sort of de facto messaging app on your phone when you get it. I mean it has had massive impact on on politics on shaping culture on on I mean even genocide has been connected to Facebook in in certain certain countries you know it's it's weird that this thing that is in I don't know how many different language Facebook ex how many different languages does Facebook operate under all of them I mean that this was just a a social app It was from Harvard, right? They were

17:25just connecting students together. Wasn't that initially what the the first iteration of it was? Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think you can say like no one anticipated that these things would be this significant. Um, but I also think that there's, you know, I think ultimately like what we end up seeing again and again is that like bad business models produce bad technology. you know that like the point you know what we were talking about before like the point you know Mark Zuckerberg did not create Facebook because of his deep love of like social interactions like he did not have some like deep sense of like wanting to connect people and connect the world that's not his passion you know u Jeff Bezos did not start Amazon because of his deep love of books uh you know uh these companies are oriented around um profit you know they're they're trying

18:14to make money and and they you know they're they're subject to external demands as a result. They have to like grow infinitely you know um which is insane but that's the expectation and you know so what we end up seeing is that uh the technology is not necessarily uh in our best interest because that's not what it was designed for to begin with. That is insane that companies are expected to grow infinitely. Yeah. I mean they're literally expo what what is your expectation to take over everything to have all the money and then one day and then more you know if yeah if we extrapolate we we anticipate we will have all the money there will be no other money [laughter] if you keep going that's what has to happen how can you just grow infinitely that's bizarre yeah and that's why I mean you know the I think you know the Silicon Valley

19:01obsession with China is you know a big part of that where people they're just like wow that's a lot of people there yes people can just keep growing Yeah, there was a a fantastic uh um thing that I was reading this morning. God, I wish I could remember what the source of it was, but it was uh they were they were essentially talking about how strange it is that there are so many people that are so anti-human trafficking. They're so pro-human rights. They're so antislavery. There's so all the the the powerful values that we ascribe uh that we that we we think of when we think of Western civilization, we we think of all these beautiful values, but then almost all of them rely on some form of slavery to get their electronics. Oh yeah. You have uh 8 g of cobalt in your pocket over there mined by actual child slaves. Someone had to stick a

20:02like literally they're they're getting it out of the ground, digging into the dirt to get it out of the ground. We were talking about on the podcast the other day were like, "Is there a way that this could that is there a future that you could foresee where you could buy a phone that is guilt-free? Like if I buy a pair of shoes, like I bought a pair of boots from my friend uh Jo's company. He's got a a company called Origin. They make handmade boots and like it's made in a factory in Maine. You can see a tour of the factory. These guys are stitching these things together and it's a real quality boot. And I'm like, I like that I could buy this. I know where it came from. I know that I could I could see a video of the guys making it. Like this is a thing that I can feel like I am giving them money. They're giving me a a product. Like there's a there's a nice

20:50exchange. It feels good. I don't feel like that with a phone. With a phone, I have this like bizarre disconnect. I try to pretend that I'm not buying something that's made in a factory where there's a [ __ ] net around it because so many people jump to their deaths that instead of trying to make things better, say we just we're going to put nets up, catch these [ __ ] put them back to work. Yeah. Is there is it possible we could want that we would all get together and say, "Hey, enough of this [ __ ] Will you make us a goddamn phone that doesn't make me feel like I'm supporting slavery?" Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think you know you're asking may you know I think too much [laughter] I think you're asking I think that's the same as asking like will civilization ever decide that it wants to that we collectively want to

21:39have like a sust sane and sustainable way of living. Yeah. Um sane and sustainable. And I hope the answer is yes. I think a lot of us do. You do. Right. I do. Um you don't want to [clears throat] buy a slave phone, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean I but okay so you know I feel like it's difficult to have this conversation having a conversation about capitalism right because like ultimately you know what we're talking about is like externalities that the prices of things don't incorporate their true cost uh you know that like you know we're destroying the planet for plastic trinkets and reality television uh you know like we could have we could have the full conversation if you'd like but we let's let's start with phones though. Let's start with because when most people know the actual the the the the from the origin of the materials like how they're

22:31coming how they're getting out of the ground, how they're getting into your phone, how they're getting constructed, how they're getting manufactured and and and assembled by these poor people. When most people hear about it, they they they don't like it. It makes them very uncomfortable, but they just sort of go la. They just plug their ears and keep going and buy the latest iPhone 12 because it's it's cool. It's new. What would they do instead? Well, if there was an option, so like if you have a a car that you know is being made by slaves or a car that's being made in Detroit by union workers, wouldn't you choose the car? As long as they're both of equal quality, I think a lot of people would feel good about their choice if they could buy something that well, no, these people are they're given a very good wage. They have health

23:21insurance and they're taken care of. They have a pension plan. There's all these good things that we would like to to have ourselves these workers get. So, you should probably buy that car. Why isn't there an option like that for a phone? We looked at this thing called a fair phone. Yeah, we're going over it. You can't even [ __ ] buy it in America. Like no, America has no options for fair. [laughter] They only have them in like Holland and a couple other European countries. Yeah. I mean, I I think uh yeah, maybe it's good to, you know, start with the question of phones. I I I think if you really examined like most of the things in your everyday life, um there is an apocalyptic aspect to them, you know. Yes. I mean even you know even agriculture you know it's just like you know the sugar you put in your c you know it's like I've been to the sugar beat

24:09harvest you know it's apocalyptic you know it's like u you know so I I think there's just like an aspect of civilization that we don't usually see or think about and it's a non-concious I mean non not non-concious but I mean conscious capitalism would be the idea that you are willing you want to make a profit But you only want to make a profit if everything works. Like the idea of me buying my shoes from Origin, like knowing, okay, these are the guys that make it. This is how they make it. I got this a good this feel makes me feel good. I like this. If there was that with everything, like if you if you buy a home from a a guy who you know built the home, like this is the man, this is the con, this is the the the chief construction guy, this these are the carpenters, this is the architect. Oh, okay. I get it. This all makes sense.

25:03Yeah. I mean, and that I think that's the image that a lot of uh companies try to project. You know what I mean? Uh like, you know, even Apple will say, you know, it's like designed by Apple in California, right? Sure. Designed. [laughter] And I think that's the same as like the architect and the builders that you know, you know, but those materials are coming from somewhere. Uh that's true. The wood is coming from somewhere. Yeah. And uh you know, it's not just wood. there's like petrochemicals like you know that's that that whole supply chain is apocalyptic and you're never going to meet all of those people um and so you know I think sure there I think it's you know it's difficult to be in that market like if you if you want to be in in the market of conscious capitalism or whatever because it's a market for lemons um that it's because

25:49it's so easy to just put a green logo on whatever it is that you're creating uh and no one will ever see the the back of a supply chain that's have a sad statement about humans, you know, that we're that this is how I mean that this is how we always do things. if you you let us if you leave us alone if you if there's a way you know I mean privacy is so important when it comes to communication with individuals and this is why you created signal but when you can sort of hide all the various elements that are involved in all these different process all these different things that we buy and use and then you know as you said they're apocalyptic which is a great way of describing it if you I mean you're at the ground watching these kids pull colan out of the ground in Africa. I mean, you would probably feel really sick about your cell phone. Yeah. And um

26:52Yeah, but I don't think I think it's a little more complicated than to say that just like humans um are terrible or whatever. No, I don't think humans are terrible. I think humans are great. But I think if you put humans together and you give them this diffusion of responsibility that comes from a corporation and then you give them a mandate, you have to make as much money as possible every single year. And then you have shareholders and you have all all these different factors that will allow them to say, "Well, I just work for the company. You know, I'm not I'm not it's not my call. You know, I'm I just, you know," and you got the guy carving up a steak saying, "Listen, I'm so sorry that if we have to use slaves, but look, Apple's worth $5 trillion. We've done a great job for our shareholders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the line, follow all the

27:36way down to the beginning and you literally have slaves. Yeah. I I fundamentally agree and I anytime you end up in a situation where um like most people do not have the agency they would need in order to direct their life that they would the way that they would want. you know, direct their lives so that we're living in a sane and sustainable way. Um, that I yeah, I think is a problem and I think that's the situation we're in now, you know, and honestly, I feel like, you know, the stuff that we were talking about before of, you know, people um, you know, sort of being mean online um, is a reflection of that. You know, that that's the power that people that's the only power power that people have. you know, it's like, you know, like, you know, the only thing that if the only thing you can do is call someone a name, you're going to call them a name, you

28:34know, and I think that it's like, yeah, it's unfortunate. Um, but I think it is also um unfortunate that most people have so little agency and control over the way that the world works, that that's all they have to do. And I guess you would say also that the people that do have power that are running these corporations don't take into account what it would be like to be the person at the bottom of the line to be the person that is there's ne there's no discussion. There's no like board meetings like hey guys what are we doing about slavery? Well I I'm sure that I'm sure that they do talk about that honestly but they've done nothing. uh they've probably done something or they've probably done what they think is something but I think it's um even you know even the CEO of a company is someone who's just doing their job at the end of the day you know that they

29:30can't they don't have ultimate control and agency over how it is that uh a company performs because they are accountable to their share shareholders they're accountable to the board you know that it's like I think there is a tendency for people to look at what's happening particularly with technology today and think that it's the fault of the people um you know like the the leaders of these companies you know and you know like um I think it goes both ways you know uh Slavo Xek um always talks about um when you look at the old political speeches um you know if you look at the fascist leaders um you know they would give a speech and when there was a moment of applause um they would just sort of stand there and accept the applause because in their ideology uh they were responsible for the thing that people were applauding. You know,

30:17and if you watch the old communist leaders, you know, like when Stalin would give a speech um and he would say something and there would be a moment of applause, he would also applaud uh because in their ideology of historical materialism, they were just agents of history. They were just the tools of the inevitable. Uh it wasn't them, you know, they had just sort of been chosen as the agents of this thing that was an inevitable process. And so they were applauding history, you know, and sometimes when I see like the CEOs of tech companies give speeches uh and people applaud, I kind of feel like they should also be applauding, you know, that it's not them, you know, that right uh technology has its own agency, its own force that they're the tools of in a way. That's a very interesting way of looking at it that yeah, they are the tools of

31:05it. And at this point, if we look at where we are in 2020, this it seems inevitable. It seems like there's just this unstoppable amount of momentum behind innovation and behind just the process of creating newer, better technology and constantly putting it out and then dealing with the demand for that newer, better technology and then competing with all the other people that are also putting out newer better technology. this and then yeah, look what we're doing. We're we are helping the demise of human beings because I feel and I've I've said this multiple times and I'm going to say it again. I think that we are the electronic caterpillar that will give way to the butterfly. We are We don't know what we're doing. We are putting together some thing that's going to take over. We're putting together some ultimate being, some symbiotic

32:03connection between humans and and technology or literally an artificial version of life. Not even artificial, a version of life constructed with silicone and and wires and and things that we're making. We're we're if we keep going the way we're going, we're going to come up with a technology that is going to be exmachina. It's gonna it's going to pass the touring test and it's going to literally be something that's better than what we are. A better version of a human being. I think we're a ways away. Uh yeah, we're a ways away. But what how many ways? 50 years. The moment that I can put my hand under the like automatic sink thing and have the soap come out without like waving around, you know, like then I'll be worried, you know? But like that's simplistic, sir. [laughter] How dare you? Well, here's a good example. You know, the touring test is

32:54the Turing test is uh if uh someone sat down with like an exmachina, remember the the the was one of my all-time favorite movies where the coder is brought in to talk to the the woman, he falls in love with the robot lady and she passes the touring test because he's he's in love with her. I mean, he really can't differentiate in his mind that is a woman that's not a robot. Who was it? Allan Turring. What was the the gentleman's name? Alan Turing. Allen Turing that came up with the Turing test. You know, he he was a gay man in England in the 1950s when it was illegal to be gay and they chemically castrated him because of that. And he wound up killing himself. That's only 70 years ago. Oh yeah. Yeah. Just [ __ ] insane. I mean, just think that this this man back then was thinking there is going to be a time where we will have some kind of an a

33:57creation where we we imitate life, the current life that we're aware of, where we're going to make a version of it that's going to be indistinguishable from the versions that are biological. And that very guy by whatever twisted ideas of what human beings should or shouldn't do, whatever expectations of culture at the time is forced to be chemically castrated and winds up committing suicide just by the hand of humans. [ __ ] strange man. Like really strange. I mean worse than strange. I mean that's Oh yes. Horrible. But I mean, but so bizarre that this is the guy that comes up with the test of of like how do we know when something is like what what when it passes when you have an artificial person that passes for a person and then what kind of rights do we give this per what is this like what what what is it like if it has emotions?

34:57What if it cries? Are you allowed to kick it? You know, like what do you do? Like that's But I made it. I turned it on. And I could [ __ ] torture it, but you can't. It's screaming. It's It's an agony. Don't do that. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I don't think about this stuff that often, but it is, you know, it's an empirical test, right? So, it's like, um, it's a way to avoid having to define what consciousness is, right? Which is kind of strange. We're conscious beings and we don't actually really even know what that means, right? And so instead we have this empirical test where it's just sort of like well if you can't tell the difference um you know without being able to see it then uh then we'll just call that you know I think that is really a lot closer than we think. I think that's I think that's 50 years. I think that if everything

35:44goes well I think I'm going to be 103y old man on my dying bed being taken care of by robots and I'm going to feel real [ __ ] up about that. I'm gonna be like, "Oh my god, I can't believe this. I'm gonna leave." And then all the people that I knew that are alive, they're the last of the people. This is it. The robots are going to take over. And it's they're not even going to be robots. They got to come up with some cool name for them. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's a lot of um most of what I see in like the artificial intelligence world right now is not really intelligence, you know? It's uh it's just matching. You know, it's like you show a model an image of 10 million cats and then you can show it an image and it will be like I predict that this is a cat and then you can show it an image of a truck and it'll be like

36:28I predict that this is not a cat. Uh and I don't I think there's one way of looking at it that's like well you just do that with enough things enough times and that's what intelligence is. Um, but I kind of hope not. And I, you know, the way that the way that it's being approached right now, I think is also uh dangerous in a lot of ways because what we're doing is just feeding information about the world into these models and that just encodes the existing biases and problems with the world into the things that we're creating. Um, and you know, that I think has uh negative results, but but I mean, yes, it's true like this ecosystem is moving and and it's advancing and whatever. I think the thing that I think is unfortunate is that like right now that ecosystem, this sort of um like really capital-driven investment uh startup sort of ecosystem has a monopoly

37:20on like groups of young people trying to do something ambitious together in the world. And uh in the same way that I think it's unfortunate that like grad school has a monopoly on groups of people learning things together, you know. Um, and so part of what we're trying to do different with Signal is it's a nonprofit. Uh, so, uh, because we want to be for something other than profit. Um, and so we're trying to like explore a different way of like groups of people, you know, doing something mildly ambitious. Has anyone come along and go, I know it's a nonprofit, would you like to sell? [laughter] Uh, well, you can't do that. It's like in the structure. There's nothing to sell. There's no there's nothing. It's kind of amazing though that you guys have figured out a way to create like basically a better version of iMessage that you could use on Android because

38:06one of the big complaints about Android is the lack of [snorts] any encrypted messaging services and that's good messaging service. Yeah, they've just recently come out with their own version of iMessage, but it kind of sucks. You can't do group chats. There's a lot of things you can't do with it and it's it's encrypted. But is is the new me and it I don't think it's rolled out everywhere too, right? It's not everywhere. I don't think it's rolled out at all actually. Oh, you could get a beta. Is that what it is? Yeah, I don't I don't know what the Right. So, it's like um that you know Android So, Google for Android makes an app called messages which is just the standard SMS texting app and they put that on the phones that they make like the Pixel and stuff like that, you know. And then there's the rest of the ecosystem. You know, there's like, you

38:51know, Samsung devices, Huawei devices, you know, all this stuff. Um, and it's sort of it depends, you know, what's what's on those things. And so they've been trying to move from this very old standard called SMS that you mentioned before to this newer thing called RCS. Um, which actually I don't know what that stands for. I think in my mind I always think of it as standing for too little too late. Uh, but they're [laughter] they're trying to move to that. Uh and uh so they're doing that on the the device the part of the ecosystem that they control which is the the devices that um they make and sell and they're trying to get other people on board as well and they originally RCS didn't have any facility for end to end encryption and uh they're actually using our stuff the signal protocol uh in the uh the new version of RCS that they're

39:39shipping. So I think they've announced that but I don't know if it's if it's on or not. I have two bones to pick with you guys. Yeah. two things that I don't necessarily like. One, when uh I downloaded Signal and I joined, basically everyone that I'm friends with who was also on Signal got a message that I'm on Signal. So, you ratted me out. You ratted me out to all these people that are in my contact list. Why do you want it to be difficult for people to communicate with you privately? Well, me personally, because there's a lot of people that have my phone number that I wish didn't have my phone number, and now all a sudden they got a message from me that I'm on Signal. Yeah. And then they send me a message. Hey, I'd like this from you. I want you to do that for me. How about call me about this. I got a project. So, I just wish you didn't like rat me

40:25out. I wish there was like a way that you could say, "Do you want everyone to know that you just joined Signal?" Yes or no. I'd say no. Another one. Those little dot dot dots, the ellipsus. Yeah. Yeah. Can you shut that off because I don't want anybody to know that I'm responding to a text. You can turn it off. Can you turn that off? Oh, okay. So, it's in the settings. Yeah. Privacy settings. Typing indicators you can turn off. Read receipts. You can turn off. That's a big problem with iMessage. People get mad at you. Like, if you see the dot dot dots and then there's no message. Like, hey, you were going to respond and then you didn't. Like, why don't you just relax? Just go about your life and pretend that I didn't text you back yet cuz I will. But it's not like the dot dot dots like people are go, "Oh, it's coming. Here comes the message." And then there's no

41:10message. They [laughter] Yeah, you can turn that off. You can also turn off receipts so people don't don't even know if you've read their message. Yes, that's good, too. Yeah. My friend Sager has it set up so that if you uh he texts you, "You have 30 minutes, bitch." And then they all disappear. All the messages disappear. He's got Yeah. Yeah. That's That's kind of a sweet move. I like that. Yeah. I with the um like the discovery question of like can you don't want people to know that you're on signal. Um it's kind of so we're working on it but it's it's a more difficult problem than you might imagine because um you want some people to know that you're on you know it's like you want some text so you want nobody to know. Well me personally I I have a unique set of problems that comes with uh anything that I do like with messaging and stuff.

41:59It's like I just there's too I have no too many people. I've changed my number once a year. It's just I have and I have multiple phone numbers. Yeah. I got a lot of problems. Yeah. But this is this is a unique problem with me that it's like all of a sudden I'm getting like how the [ __ ] does he know? And then I had to ask someone. They go, "Oh no, when you sign up it sends everybody on your contact list that's on Signal a message that says you're on Signal." I'm like, "Oh." Well, we don't send that actually. uh just as a I know you don't care but the we don't actually know who your contacts are you know so it's like the signal does though the app does the the app on your phone does and it and it doesn't even send a message to those people it's just that those people know that you're on Signal they those people know your phone number

42:41and the that app now knows that that phone number is on Signal and did you do that just to get more people to use Signal was it an idea of the the reason why like why when you sign up for Signal does it send all the other people in your contact list on Signal message. Uh, a lot of people like it. So, a lot of people like like knowing who that they can communicate with. And so, uh, we're trying to make So, and the other thing is like we try to square the actual technology with the way that it appears to work to people, right? So, like right now with most technology, it seems like, you know, you send a message and the person you can see it is the person you received you sent the message to, you know, the recipient, you know, and that's not how it actually works. Um, and so like a lot of what we're trying to do is actually just square the

43:21way the technology actually works with what it is that people perceive. Uh, and so like fundamentally right now, you know, Signal is based on phone numbers if you register with your phone number. Like some people are going to know that they can contact you on Signal. It's very difficult to make it so that they can't, you know, that like uh if we if we didn't do that, you know, they could hit the compose button and see just that they could send you a message, you know, they would just see you in the list of contacts that they can send messages to, you know, and then if we like didn't display that, like they could just try and send you a message and see whether like a message goes through, you know, like it's always possible to like detect whether it is that you're on signal the way that things are currently designed. It's interesting also how it works so

44:03much differently with Android than it does with iMessage. Like with Android, it'll also send an an SMS. I noticed that uh I can use Signal as my main messaging app on Android and it'll send SMS or it'll send a signal message. It doesn't do that with uh I with iPhones. Yeah, Apple doesn't let you. Yeah, I found that to be interesting cuz I tried to send people messages. I thought it would just send it as an SMS and it didn't. We would if we could, but Apple just sent it into the email. It doesn't allow it. It doesn't allow it. Interesting. Because Apple's scared of you. Say it. Say it. They're [ __ ] scared. No, I mean I They should be. Apple is a better version of what they've got. How about that? Uh I agree, but uh yeah, I mean they they have a much more complicated answer, but maybe you could distill it down to that.

44:52You guys need to just develop your own version of AirDrop and then no one will need Apple ever again. That's what's holding people back. Like a universal AirDrop. Airdrop keeps a lot of [ __ ] people on Apple. You think? Oh, it's the best. You make a video, like a long video, like a couple minutes long, and you can just airdrop it to me. Whereas, if you text it to me, especially if I have an Android phone, oh, it becomes this disgusting version. Down sample it. Looks terrible. Yeah. No, that's true. That's true. Yeah. Photographs are not too bad. I think that it it does it down sample photographs as well, but not too bad. It's like you could look at it, it looks like a good photograph, but video is just god awful. It's embarrassing when someone sends you a video and you have it on an Android phone. You're like, "What the [ __ ] did

45:39you send me? This is terrible. [laughter] What did you take this with? A flip phone from the '9s? It's so bad." But I mean a lot of that is like uh I think the reason that that the the reason why it is that way is is kind of interesting to me which is you know it's like these are um protocol you know it's like when you're just using a normal SMS message on Android you know uh that was like this agreement that phone carriers made with each other in like you know two before that way you know 96. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. you know, and then have they've been unable to change the way that it works since then because um you have to get everyone to agree, right? And is Apple holding back some sort of a universal standard? Because if they did have a universal standard, then everyone would have this option to use you could use a Samsung phone or a

46:31Google phone. You could use anything and everybody would be able to message you clearly without a problem. Like one of the things that holds people back is if you switch from an iPhone to an Android phone, you lose all those iMes. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're probably doing that intentionally because they [ __ ] weasels. They they want people [laughter] to continue to use iPod. Don't they have enough money? Like Jesus Christ, there's never enough. That's the problem. That is the problem, right? Yeah. And I think I mean it's like I think the thing that everyone's worried about right now with Apple is like you know Apple um you know what I said before of like bad business models produce bad technology. Um you know thus far Apple's business model is much better than you know Google or Facebook or Amazon or you know like their

47:18their business is predicated on selling phones selling hardware you know and u that means that they um can think a little bit more thoughtfully about the way that their software works than other people and I think what people are concerned about is that the that that business model is going to change you know that they they've they're, you know, approaching an asmtote of how many phones that they can sell. And so now they're looking at like software, you know, they're like, what if we had our own search engine? What if we had, you know, our own thing? What if we had, you know, and the moment that that starts to happen, then they're sort of, you know, moving in the direction of the rest of tech. Uh, which, you know, who knows how they do it, but that that's what I think people are concerned about. They've done a better job at protecting your privacy

48:02though in terms of like particularly like Apple maps like the map app is far superior in terms of sharing your information than say like the Google maps but the argument you could make is that Google maps is superior product because they share that information. Like Google Maps is also ways now, right? Like they bought ways which is fantastic. like lets you know where the cops are, you know, there's an accident up ahead. All kinds of [ __ ] right? But Apple Maps was not that good. It's I use it because I like the ethic behind it. I like their idea behind it. They they delete all the information after you make, you know, if you go to a destination, it's not saving it, sending it to a server and making sure it knows like, you know, what was there and what wasn't there and how well you you traveled and sharing information.

48:57They're not doing that. They're not sharing your information, right? Um I we don't know. You know, it's like I'm sure that they have a policy. Uh I haven't read the policy and maybe the policy says that. Um but supposedly so you you know but and you're also sort of you're still in the in the world of like um trying to make computers secure right you know it's like there's probably data the data is probably accumulating somewhere and maybe people can compromise those places you know um we don't know but I and and for sure the the intent behind the software that they have constructed I think has been much better than a lot of the other players in big tech I think the concern is just that as that software ever becomes a larger part of their bottom line that that might change. I wonder if they could figure out a way

49:49to have an I don't give a [ __ ] phone or I care phone. Like you want to have an I don't give a [ __ ] phone. This phone is like who knows who's making it, but look, it's really good. It's got a 100 megapixel camera and all this jazz and 5,000 milliamp battery. And then you've got an I care phone. And I care phone it's like like an iPhone 10. But what is what's the what's different about the I care phone? The I care phone you get like a a clear line of distinction. You get you get a a real clear path. This is where we got our materials. These are the people that are making it. This is how much they're getting paid. There everyone is unionized. They're all getting healthcare. This is They all have 401k plans. This is Yeah, it costs a little bit more. It's not as good. If you if you truly encapsulated all of the social cost with producing that

50:43phone, I think would cost more than a little bit more. How much more do you think it would cost? Uh I think some astronomical number, you know, that it's like the, you know, it's like it's not like I'm sure Apple would prefer not to have child slaves mining cobalt for the batteries that are in their phone. Is that a thing you can say when a company's worth as much as most countries? Like they have so much cash? Yeah. Can you really say that they they would rather not use slaves? No, I'm sure I'm sure I don't want to go broke. I have only have 14 trillion. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? I need slaves. I need someone to dig the the the colong. What would I do if I was them? Well, first of all, I could never be them. it would never work. Uh but if I was, I would say, hey, um why don't we open up a factory in America and why don't

51:35But you got to mind the co the cobalt isn't America. Why don't Right. Why don't we get all of our cobalt from recycled phones? Is that possible? Because that going to recycle them? That's a good question. I think that's what the fair phone's trying to do, right? Isn't are they using all recycled materials? Yeah, I I mean I don't any image I've seen of electronic recycling is equally apocalyptic. You know, there's just piles of [ __ ] like in some next to lake in China where people are You're buming me out, man. How about we [laughter] But I think if you were the CEO of Apple and you were like, "This is a priority. We're going to spend you know, however many trillions of dollars it takes to do this." Um your shareholders go, "Hey, [ __ ] face." You're fired. Yeah. Out. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You would [snorts] have to be the

52:21grand pooha of Apple. You'd have to be the ultimate ruler. But it's not like um even then if you were just like, you know, I'm willing to take the hit, you know, uh I'm going to do no one can oust me or whatever. I'm the the grand pooh bot, you know. Yeah. Then it's like your share price plummets, which means that um your employee retention plummets because those people are also working for the equity, you know. So it's like now they're working lessons and then they get poached away by these other companies, you It's like dirty companies come and steal your clean employees. This is what Apple's website says now. It says they're [clears throat] committed to one day sourcing 100%. Look at this. Completely recycled. Every bit as advanced. They're committed to one day sourcing one day. We're planning on the year 30,000. I [laughter] mean, you know, it's like I

53:09don't they're not they're not like sitting around twirling their mustaches. You know what I mean? It's just like everyone likes good things and not bad things. Maybe they are. Let me read that again, Jamie. This says, um, uh, 100% recyclable and renewable materials across all of our products and packaging because making doesn't have to mean taking from the planet. Oh, come on, you guys. It's like Nike. It's the same thing, too, right? They're all committed to Black Lives Matter and all these social justice causes, and they're using slave labor, too, you know, aren't they? In China, they're they're using slave labor to make Nikes, probably. So, go back to that um that thing. What are they trying to do? What's they have like this I remember seeing a robot they have that can like lighter the planet right out of the box takes the pieces out of it at a very

53:55fast rate than like probably human hands can. Oh, okay. So, that's why I was trying to dig through here, but I found that. Well, that would be good. I think that's the robot. That's the the piece taking robot. Daisy. This is Daisy. Don't name her. You name her. You got a problem. There you go. 2030 entirely clean energy, which isn't quite as it's, you know, 2030 means transitioning hundreds of our manufacturing suppliers to 100% renewable sources of electricity. Well, that's interesting. If they can actually do that 100% resource uh use all the if they can figure out a way to do that and to have uh recyclable materials and have all renewable electricity whether it's wind or solar. If they could really figure out how to do that I think that would be pretty amazing. But who's going to put it together? Are they going to still use slaves to put it together? I mean, I I

54:54guess the people that are working at Foxcon are technically slaves, but would you want your child to work there, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think you can say that about a lot of the aspects of our economy, though. You know, would who would willingly go into a coal mine? Yes. Right. Yeah. You know, that there's there's some element of coercion to a lot of what keeps the world spending, right? And that's the when you get into these insidious arguments about uh or conversations about conspiracies like conspiracies to keep people impoverished, they're like, "Well, why would you want to keep people impoverished?" Well, who who's going to work in the coal mines? You're not going to get wealthy, highly educated people to work in the coal mines. You need someone to work in the coal mines. So, what do you do? Well, what you do is you

55:40don't you don't help anybody get out of these situations. So you'll always have the ability to draw from these impoverished communities, these poor people that live in Appalachia or where wherever their coal miners are coming from. Like there's not a whole lot of ways out. Like I have a friend who came from Kentucky and he's like the way he described it to me goes, "Man, you've never seen poverty like that. Like people don't want to concentrate on those people because it's not as glamorous as some other forms of poverty." He goes, "But those communities are so poor." Like, yeah, 40 40 million Americans, right? 40 million Americans are living in poverty. Yeah. Um I mean, I don't know if that conspiracy is accurate, but that's the one that people always want to draw from, right? They always want to I mean, I don't think you need a

56:27conspiracy, you know, you just you have you have poor people, structural forces, you know, like Yeah. Yeah. Um that's that's why it's rare that a company comes along and has a business plan like Signal where they're like we're going to be nonprofit. We're going to create something that we think is of extreme value to human beings uh just to to civilization in general. the ability to communicate anonymously or or at least privately that this is uh it's a very rare thing that you guys have done that we decided to do this and to do it in a nonprofit way like what what was the decision that led up to that and then was there any how how many people are involved? Uh now um yeah okay well now there's uh you know 20ome people uh which do you Um, I think that's a little Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, it's always interesting talking to people like a lot

57:31of times I'll, um, I'll meet somebody, they're like, "Oh, yeah, you're the you're the person who did like Signal or something." I'm like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." They're like, "Okay, cool. What are you doing now?" You know, and I'm like, "Oh, I'm still working on Signal." You know, and they're like, "Oh, what is there like another Signal that you're going to do? you're going to do like signal 2 or you know like I think it's hard for people to understand that there's that software is never finished you know that there's this um which is something that I really envy about like the kind of creative work that someone like you does you know that like I envy artists musicians writers poets painters um you know people who can create something and be done you know that like uh you can record an album today and 20 years later you can

58:12listen to that album and it'll be just good you know it's like uh software is never finished and if you stop it'll just like float away like dandelion se what happens if you stop because software is not um it's very hard to explain this it's not um it doesn't exist in isolation it's a part of the ecosystem of of like all software and that ecosystem is moving and it's moving really fast you know there's a lot of money behind it a lot of energy in in it and if you aren't moving with it it will just you know stop working uh and also it's like you know uh a project like this is not just the software that runs on your phone but the service of like you know moving the messages around on the internet and that requires a little bit of care and attention and if you're not doing that then it will dissipate and if you're doing something nonprofit

59:00the way you're doing it how do you pay everybody like how does it work? Yeah. Well, okay. So, you know, the history of this was um I think before the internet really took over our lives in the way that it has, there were the kind of um social spaces for people to experiment with different ideas outside of the context of their everyday lives, you know, like um art projects, um uh punk rendevous, um experimental uh gatherings, um uh the embers of art movements, you know, that uh these spaces existed and were things that I found myself in and a part of and they were like important to me in my life. You look like a dude who go to Burning Man. Uh actually I I am not a dude that goes to Burn. [laughter] Maybe you're missing it. Maybe I I've been once. I went in Yeah. 2000, I think. Yeah. Uh and uh early adopter. I Well, at funny because at the time

60:00that I went, people were like, "Oh, man. It's not like used to be." It's [laughter] like, and now people are like, "Have you been?" I was like, "I went once in 2000." They're like, "Wow, wow, that's when it was like the real deal." I'm like, "I don't think so." Uh, it's one of those things where it's like, you know, there's like day one and then on day two they're like, "Ah, it's not like day one." You know, like it just gets worse. Uh, but, uh, yeah, I don't know. Those things those spaces were important to me and like an important part of my life. And as more of our life started to be taken over by technology, um you know, me and my friends felt like those spaces were missing online, you know, and so we wanted to demonstrate that it was possible to create spaces like that. And um there had been a history of people thinking about um

60:48cryptography in particular and uh and which is kind of funny in hindsight, right? Uh so in the like 80s so the history of cryptography is actually not long like uh at least in outside of the military you know uh and you know it really in starts in the 70s. Um and uh there were some really important things that that happened then and in the 80s there was this person who was just sort of this lone maniac who was like writing a bunch of papers about cryptography during a time when it wasn't wasn't actually that relevant because there was no internet. the you know the the the applications for these things were harder to imagine. Um and then in the late 80s there was um this uh guy who wrote a who was a retired engineer who discovered the papers that this maniac David Sham had been writing and was really was he doing this in isolation or was he

61:40a part of a project or anything? No, I think David Cham was um I think he's an academic. I'm actually I'm actually I'm embarrassed that I don't know but uh he um he did a lot of the the notable work um on uh using the the primitives that had had already been developed and um he had a lot of interesting ideas and there's this guy uh who was retained engineer his name was Tim May uh who was uh kind of a weird character and he found these paper papers by David Cham was really enchanted by um what they could represent for a future and he wanted to write like a sci-fi novel about that was sort of predicated on a world where cryptography existed and there was a future where the internet was developed. And so he wrote some notes about this novel. Uh and he he titled the notes the crypto anarchy manifesto. And uh he published the notes online and people

62:33got really into the notes. Um and then uh he started a mailing list in the early 90s called the Cipper Punk's mailing list and all these people started you know joined the mailing list and they started communicating about you know what the future was going to be like and how you know they needed to develop cryptography to live their you know crypto anarchy future. Uh and um at the time uh it's strange to think about now but cryptography was uh somewhat illegal. It was it was regulated as a munition really. Yeah. So if you wrote a bit a little bit of crypto code and you sent it to your friend in Canada, that was the same as like shipping Stinger missiles across the border to Canada. Wow. So did did people actually go to jail for cryptography? Uh there were like some high-profile legal cases. Um nobody I don't know of uh any situations where people were like

63:20tracked down as like munition dealers or whatever, but it really um hampered what people were capable of doing. Uh so people got really creative. There's some people who wrote some crypto uh software called pretty good privacy PGP and they uh they printed it in a book like a MIT press book in a machine readable font. Uh, and then they're like, "This is speech, you know, this is a book." You know, it's like, "I have my first amendment right to like print this book and to distribute it." And then they like shipped the books to like Canada and other countries and stuff. And then people in those places scanned it back in uh to computers and they were able to make the case that they were uh legally allowed to do this because of, you know, they're first to memorize. Uh, and um people uh other people moved to Anguila and started like writing code in

64:08Anguila and like shipping around the world. Uh there were a lot of people who were fervently interested. Why Anguila? Uh because it's close to the United States and uh there were no laws there about producing photography. So uh I think I something people they have like three cases of COVID there ever. Oh really? Yeah. It's a really interesting place. Yeah. I I used to work down there. It's reallyii Okay. International traffic and arms regulation. It's a United States regulatory regime to restrict and control the export of defense and military related technologies to safeguard US national security and further US foreign policy objectives. ITAR Yeah, they were closed and Gila was closed till like uh November. They wouldn't let anybody in. And yeah, if you want to go there, they have like I was reading they all these crazy restrictions. You have to get COVID

65:01tested and you have to apply and then then when you get there they test you when you get there because they have a keeping it real. They have a no deaths. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I like it's a it's a interesting place. Yeah. This is what I was reading. They're inviting companies to come move here. Like come work here. Oh, interesting. Come. We'll test the [ __ ] out of you and you can't go anywhere but come here. It's beautiful. It is beautiful. I used to work on boats down there. Yeah. What' you do on boats? Uh, I was like really um I don't know. I I for a while was like really into sailing and uh I had a commercial license. I was moving boats around and stuff, but my parents lived in a sailboat for a while. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. They just decided to just check out in and uh this was like I want to say like early 2000s somewhere around

65:51then. They lived on a sailboat for a few years till my mom got tired of it. They go around the world or uh they went they were in the Bahamas. Yeah. They were uh they were all around like that part of the world and they they were in California for a little while on their boat. Yeah. They just they just decided like let's just live on a boat for a while. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. I I I discovered sailing by accident where I was like um working on a project with a friend in the early 2000s and we were looking on Craigslist for something unrelated and we saw a boat that was for sale for $4,000 and I thought a boat was like a million dollars or something. I was just like what you the sailboats are 4,000 and this is just some listing. There's probably even cheaper boats, you know. Uh and so we got really into it and we discovered that you can go to any

66:35America any uh marina in North America and get a boat for free. You know that like every marina has a lean sale dock on it where people have stopped paying their slip fees and the boats are just derelict and abandoned and they've you know put it on these docks and really Yeah. They'll get a boat for free. Yeah. They have an auction. Uh there's usually like a minimum bid of you know 50 bucks. 50 bucks or whatever you know. And most times it doesn't get bid on and they chop the boat up and uh throw it away really. And if you show up. So a functional boat. Well functional is that's the problem, right? You know um you got to maintain the [ __ ] out of boats. Yeah. So, you know, if you put some work into it though, you can get it going. And, uh, so we started doing that. We were like, you know, getting boats, fixing them up, sailing them as

67:15far as we could. And then, uh, eventually I got a commercial license and started sailing other people's boats. But, wow. All this on a whim of How much does a boat cost? You can get a boat for four grand. Holy [ __ ] Next thing you know, you're working on boats. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was It's a really It's a whole world, you know. It's just like, you know, finding that link on Craigslist was like, you know, opening a door to another reality, right? Where it's like, yeah, because it's it's pretty amazing, you know, uh, you know, me and some friends used to sail around the Caribbean and, um, you know, the the feeling of like, you know, you pull up an anchor and then you sail like, you know, 500 miles to some other country or whatever and you get there and you drop the anchor and you're just like, we it was just the wind. the wind that took,

68:00you know, like there was no engine, there was no fuel. It was just the wind, you know, and you catch fish and, you know, it's just like you're if you want to go real old school, you got to use one of them. What are those [ __ ] sex? Of course. Did you use one of those? No, you didn't. Did you really? I was like really into like, you know, no electronics, like it's just complicated, you know, they're expensive or whatever. So, we had a taff rail log. You seen one of those things? No. How's that? It's like a little uh propeller on a string uh that you connect to a gauge and as it turns the gauge keeps track of how far you've traveled. Uh what? Yeah. So it's like uh you know a propeller on a string. So it's just a thing that turns a string at a constant rate depending on how fast you're moving. So uh so it can gauge how

68:43much distance distance you've traveled. So are the is a string marked? No, no, no, no. uh like it's just a constant length that's it's [snorts] always spinning and it's always turning the gauge. Uh so and then it reads a number. So it says so it's just like dial and the number of how many nautical miles you've traveled. And so then you're just like, okay, well, we started here and then we headed, you know, on this heading and, you know, we did that and we traveled 10 miles, so we must be here, you know, and then, you know, once a day you can take a a site with your sex and then you can, you know, do some dead reckoning with a compass and Wow, dude, you went old school. Yeah. I once had a job actually. Who did you do this with? Just friends. Yeah. And you had to have some [ __ ] committed friends cuz like the friends had to be, you know, you had

69:30to be all on the same page cuz they could be like, "Hey man, let's get a [ __ ] GPS. You guys are [ __ ] I don't want to die. I'm not going to get eaten by a shark. How much food do we have? People die out here, man. This is the ocean. We didn't really have any money." So it was like, you know, it wasn't like uh much of a decision. I mean, we, you know, it's like put things in perspective like, you know, we took a trip to uh through the Caribbean once from Florida. The way that we got to Florida was like riding freight trains to the you know we like hopped trains to get you know it's like this was like low low budget uh traveling. You guys were hobos. No, but you know that's a hobo move. It was lowbagger for sure. [laughter] Uh but like yeah, I was I was also like uh just weirdly ideological about it where like um I had a job once in the

70:15Caribbean that was like um I was almost like a camp counselor basically where there was this camp that was like a sailing camp but it was like 13 teenagers mostly from North America showed up in St. Martin and then got on a boat with me and uh another woman my age and we were like the adults and then it was just like we sailed from St. Martin to train a dad over the course of 6 weeks with these like 13 kids on a 50ft sailboat who left their kids with you. That's what I want to know, man. It was like, is this you? Oh, yeah. So, we made a uh me and my friends made a video called Hold Fast. Uh that was trying to demystify sailing. Bro, you've been rocking this wacky hair for a long time, dude. I know. I need a haircut, [laughter] you know. Pandemic, you know. Wow. Uh [laughter] uh. Whoa. Oh, you had tornadoes out there. Yeah, I watched. And you caught fish. Yeah. Yeah.

71:06So, you lived off the fish that you caught basically? Yeah. Fish, [ __ ] seaweed. Wow. Seaweed. Yeah. So, when you prepare seaweed, what do you do? You boil it. You going to sharpen your [ __ ] knife, son. That's ridiculous. What are you using? A pencil to try to kill that poor fish. Embarrassing. This is embarrassing. This whole video is embarrassing, but uh so thank you for that because you kind of didn't know what you were doing. And here's you with uh you're what are you doing here? You're mapping out where you're at. Dead reckoning. Yeah. Dead reckoning. Yeah. That position was 50 miles off. 50 miles off. [laughter] So where you thought you were versus where you actually were was 50 miles difference. Yeah. And you're going how many miles an hour? Very slow. If you're doing really well, you know you're making five knots, five

71:49nautical miles an hour. Five miles an hour. Jesus Christ. So you're walking. You're basically walking on the ocean. Yeah. Yeah. Not walking, slow going, but you never stop. That's the thing. You can sail all night. You can just keep going. You know, you're a light jog. You're jogging on the ocean. Anyway, I was a tyrant with these kids where like we had like a nice boat and I just disabled all of the electronics and I like disabled the electric uh anchor windless pull up by hand. How long was this boat? Uh this was 50 ft. 50 ft with 14 kids, you said. I think 13. Yeah, 50 is a big boat. That's actually a big boat. Yeah. But it doesn't seem like a lot of room for all these kids. Yeah. are like sleeping on the deck and in the cockpit. Oh my god, that's insane. Did you feel weird that you I mean you're responsible for their food?

72:33You're responsible for making sure they don't fight with each other. Yeah. I mean, I I actually enjoyed it. I think it was fun. Yeah. Well, it seemed like it like it's a Yeah, you you have to make it work. There's no other solution. You're on this boat with these kids. It's true. Do you still keep in touch with those kids? No, that was sort of like pre social media, right? So, not really. They're going to reach out to you now. [snorts] They go, "Man, I remember that. That was [ __ ] crazy. Can't believe my parents left me with you." I can't believe they did either, man. So, did you have to sign any paperwork or anything? Like, how did you take care of these kids? I'm sure I had to sign something. I don't I don't remember. You don't remember? Yeah. Wow. Was there any time where you were like halfway into this trip? You're like, "What have I signed up for?"

73:18Oh, sure. All the time. Yeah. But I was I you know, I I'd never really been in a situation like that either. And um who has I don't know. It's like I didn't even have siblings, you [snorts] know, like it's like uh Oh, really? Yeah. So, but I and I was pretty, you know, it was interesting. thing. I feel like I learned a lot and it was um but I was pretty like um tyrannical in a lot of ways, you know, and but in a way that I was trying to like encourage it was it was fun to see um particularly teenagers who had like a really sort of North American affect about how to be um just like let all of that go um over a few weeks, you know, on the ocean where it's just like, you know, it's just us. We're here. There's nobody else watching. um you know we're sleeping next to each other you know it's like kids just getting comfortable with um themselves you know and

74:11and you know I would try and like so I was like um I am uh really into rock paper scissors uh how into it are you I'm undefeated [laughter] uh how is that possible so whenever [snorts] they wanted anything I would be like all right rock paper scissors you know they would like can we like do this thing I'd be like all right we'll do rock paper scissors if you win, you can do this thing. If I win, and then I would like pick the thing that was like their sort of deepest fear, you know, it's like the really shy person had to like write a ha coup about every day and then read it aloud at dinner, you know, like the, you know, the person who was like really into like um having like a manicure like wasn't allowed to shave her legs for the rest of the trip, you know, like that kind of thing. Wow. And so then by the end of it it was just like you know everyone had lost you

74:57know so everyone was like reading the haiku at dinner and doing you know how are you so good at rock paper scissors. It's just you know skill muscle intuition. Intuition. Can we play right now? You want to play? Yes. Oh but I only play for stakes. Okay. uh if I win, I do the programming on your show for a week. that's worth a lot of money. You can [ __ ] off. What kind of money? What do you think? Not I'm not saying like the ads or whatever. Like programming like who's going to be on? Who's going to be on? That's not possible. We're booked up months and months in advance. You were so confident until just now. We didn't take a month off. That's ridiculous to flip a coin on that. That's There's no chance. I mean, what what what would be because then you'd make me have convers Listen, the whole reason why this show works is cuz I talk to people that I

75:54want to talk to. That's why it works. Yeah. The only way something to play this game. That's not a risk. That's just one week of No, that's abandoning the show. One week of your life. No, you could bring some [ __ ] on here that I want to talk to and then I'm like, what am I doing? No. No. Impossible. All right. Well, do you think that there's something of equivalent value? No. There's nothing there's nothing that I can do. There's nothing that you could give me that would be worth a week of programming on the show. What are you going to give me? You have daygram. You'd have to give me a spectacular amount of money. I sent you a [laughter] It would like But I I would But that's the only way I would like the only way like if you ever put a monetary equivalent to that, it would have to be a spectacular amount of money for me to

76:35let someone else program the show. I've never let anybody do that before. Not even for one day. No, that was the big one of the big things about doing this show on Spotify. They could have no impact at all on who gets on. No suggestions, no nothing. The only way it works Well, what was up with that dude in the suit outside with the clipboard that was telling me from Spotify? Oh, he's from the government. He's from the CIA. [laughter] No, it's no one out there. He's joking. But the only way the show works, I think the way it works is I have to be interested in talking to the people. That's it. So, it's it has to be I get a I have like all these suggestions for guests. I go, "Oh, that kind of seems cool. Oh, that might be interesting. What if I let me read up on this? What if it's like for a week I give you the list of suggestions?" No. No. No input.

77:21No, but it's not. That's That's a ridiculous. Stand real. Stand real. Okay. Okay. All right. Impossible. In any case, how about five bucks? No. No. It's got to be 20 bucks. 20. I got 20 bucks in my pocket. Money is off the table. We can't do that. Money's off the table. Forget that. All right. Sounds like someone's scared to lose it. Rock, paper, scissors. It sounds like someone else is scared to lose. No, you're asking me for something. That's ridiculous. You don't have anything. You don't have anything that's worth a week of programming on this show. You don't have it. That's rough. It doesn't exist. That's rough. No, it doesn't. It literally doesn't exist. Like there's not like you don't there's nothing that you can have that you can offer me that I couldn't buy myself. I'll make your I'll make I'll be interesting. talking with them. You can't. No. All right, fine.

78:07But that doesn't do anything for me. That does something for you. That does zero for you. If you would have if you win, you would name your steak. I don't have a stake. There's nothing I want from you. That what you ask for me is a crazy thing. Yeah. We can't play rock paper scissors then. Huh. Interesting. Anyway, we were talking about something else before [laughter] all of this. We were talking about uh crypto cryp the evolution. Sailing with children. Well, at first we were talking about Anguila and the pack moving to Anguila. Yeah. Um, so how did you learn how to do all this stuff? Was it trial by fire when you were learning how to use all this? I mean, I don't want to call it ancient equipment, but mechanical equipment to figure out how Yeah. Yeah. secret is to begin to start. Yeah. I mean, so like a sex tent. Where the [ __ ] does one

78:57learn how to operate a sex tent and then navigate in the ocean? Uh, yeah. just I would, you know, I started uh, you know, me and some friends got a boat and um, we started fixing it up and making a lot of mistakes and then, you know, we started taking some trips and then getting lost. Yeah, I got lost a bunch. I took a [snorts] solo trip from San Francisco to Mexico and back uh, on a little 27 foot boat with no engine and Whoa. How long did that take? Uh, [sighs] few months. Yeah. And the way you did it, did you stay close so I can see the there's the the shore. So if everything [ __ ] up, I can kind of swim. Yeah. Well, no, you can't swim. Uh I learned that lesson, too. No. Why? It's um I mean, the closest I ever came to death in my life uh was just in the bay in the San Francisco Bay. I was on a boat that capsized and um I was probably

79:532,000 yards away from shore and uh I almost drowned and I I mean I didn't make it to shore and um yeah it's just the water's so cold, you know. You didn't make it to shore. No. Yeah. It's a long story. I was like um I a friend of mine was living in San Francisco and he wanted to learn how to sail and I was like you know what you should do is you should get like a little boat like a little sailing dinghy you know and then you can just anchor it like off the shore in this area that no one cares about and you know you could just sort of experiment with this little boat and so he started looking on Craigslist and he found this boat was for sale for 500 bucks up in uh up in the North Bay and uh every time we called the phone number we got an answering machine that was like hello you've reached Dr. Ken Thompson honorary I'm unable to take your call you know

80:36and we were like what is that like honorary like fake doctor is he like a judge and chiropractor you know like what is it you know and so finally we got in touch with this guy we go up there and it's this this kind of situation where like we pull up and there's like the trailer that the boat's supposed to go on and it's just full of scrap metal boy and you know and you know this guy comes out he's like oh yeah this is the trailer um we were going to do a metal run but if you want the boat you know we'll take the the metal off you know and we're like okay you know and he's taking us around. He's he's like, "Okay, the mast is over here and it's like under some leaves, you know, he's like and then, you know, the the hole is in the water here and and it's he has like a dock behind his house and the tide is all the way out, so the

81:12boat's just sitting in the mud, you know." And I'm like, "Well, how do we get this out of here?" He's like, "Oh, you'd have to come back at a different time." Uh, you know, and then you take it over there. And we're like, "You told us to come now, like at this time, you know what?" Anyway, so we go through all of this thing, you know, and and he and you know, my friend who knows nothing about us is like, "All right, Moxy, like what do you think? You know, should I get this?" And I was like, "Okay." Okay. Oh, and we we were like, "So, what's it, you know, doctor of what?" He's like, "Oh, self-declared." You know, we're like, "Oh, okay." He's a self-declared doctor. Honorary. Honorary self-declared doctor. You can do that. I guess. Why not? It's just an answer. Jamie. Yes. Doctor. Yes. I think uh we should become doctors. I tried that for a while actually. [snorts]

81:51Yeah. Did you really? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I never went to college. Did Hunus Thompson ever get an honorary degree or did he just call himself Dr. Hunters S. Thompson cuz he was calling himself doctor. Same trick. Same trick. Honor S. Thompson. Looking up how Edward Ben did this legally. Well, Bill Cosby became a doctor for a little bit. They took it back though. That's when you know you [ __ ] up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They take back your fake doctor degree. Yeah. So this guy was like, you know, my friend's like, "What do you think, Max?" And I'm like, "All right, Dr. Ken, I would have to consider I'm not sure that I would do it, but I would consider taking this boat for free. I'd have to think about it, but I would consider that, you know." and he's like, I might be amendable to that, you know. So, we've gone from like, you know, $500 to

82:34free. Uh, and so we got this boat, you know, and it was we had to deal with the metal and all that stuff. We got the boat and um we were just trying to do like a little um we were just trying to anchor it. Did you bring life vests? Yeah, I was wearing a a PFD. Yeah. A type two PFD. And um uh we took it we took it to this boat ramp and it was the end of the day and the wind was blowing kind of hard and uh the conditions weren't that good. But I was like oh we're just doing this little thing this little maneuver and we were in two boats. I built this little wooden uh rowing boat uh and my friend was going to go out in that with one anchor and I was going to sail out this built it. Yeah. Out of uh plywood. It's stitching glue uh boat. Yeah. Uh and but it you know not the sturdiest vessel. So, uh, and so, you know, he's going to go out

83:22in this little rowboat and I was going to sail out this, uh, this little catamaran. And we had two anchors and we're going to anchor and then we're going to get in the rowboat and row back. And, um, it seemed a little windy and, you know, I got in the boat first and I got out around this pier and was hit by the full force of the wind and realized that it was blowing like 20 knots. It was way way too much for what we were trying to do. But, I had misrigged part of the boat. So, it took me a while to get it turned around. Um, and by the time I got it turned around, my friend had rode out um around the pier and he got hit by the force of the wind and just got blown out into the bay. So, he's rowing directly into the wind and moving backwards, you know? Oh, [ __ ] Further out into the bay. And I was like, "Fuck." And I'm on this little

84:02hobcat and it was moving so fast. Like, it was way too windy to be sailing this thing. I've got just my clothes on. I don't have a wet suit on or anything like that. I have a life jacket and just my clothes. And we don't have a radio. We, you know, we're unprepared. It's starting to get dark. We don't have a light. Um, and I'm sailing back and forth trying to like help my friend. Uh, and it got to the point where I was like, "All right, I'm just going to attack over. I'm going to sail up uh to this boat that was called the Sea Louse. Sail up to the Seaos. I'm going to get my friend off of it. We're just going to abandon it and then we're going to sail this Hobie back uh if we can." And so I go to turn around and right as I'm turning around a gust of wind hit the boat and capsized it before I could even know that it was happening, you know,

84:46just it's just like you just it's one moment you're on the boat and the next moment you're in the water, you know, and the water is like 50° um like super uh it like is a shock, you know, it hits you and the boat was a little messed up in a way where it I couldn't write it. Uh, it had capsized and then the whole it it capsized all the way and then sank and so it was floating like [ __ ] like you know three feet underwater basically. Um, and so I'm in the water but I'm like still I'm like a little bit out of the water but like in the water and you know I had a cell phone that just immediately was busted. Um, and I look at my friend and he's a ways away now. And he didn't see me and I was, you know, yelling as loud as I could, but the wind is blowing 20 knots and it just, you know, just you can't hear each other, you know, just takes your takes

85:38your voice away. And um, he just, I mean, I was screaming, I was waving, he wasn't wearing his glasses. Uh, and he just very slowly rode away. Oh my god. And so then I was just like floating there. It was starting to get dark. Um, you know, he rode away. Did he notice that your boat had capsized? No, he didn't even see me. He He He thought that I had just sailed somewhere else, you know. Because in his mind, he was I was the person with the experience. Do you still talk to this dude? Yeah. All the time. Yeah. I'd be like, "You motherfucker." I don't blame him. In his mind, [laughter] he was the person that was in trouble, right? You know, and I understand. And he thought I just sailed somewhere else. But that's crazy. Yeah. Sailed out of vision. Yeah. And then, you know, it it basically got dark. I could see the shore. I wasn't far away. There's nobody

86:21on shore. There's nobody around. And um the wind was blowing directly offshore. So you have to swim, you know, swim into the wind uh and into the wind wave and all that stuff. And um eventually I tried swimming and I swam, you know, directly upwind. And I was cuz I was I was like, "Okay, like if I get separated from this boat and I don't make it to shore, then I'm definitely dead." You know, like there's just no saving me. Uh so I was trying to go directly upwind so that if I felt like I couldn't make it, I would float back downwind and hit the boat again. And so I tried, you know, I swam for probably like 20 minutes upwind and made no progress. It didn't feel like any progress. You know, my, you know, in 50° you have 30 to 60 minutes before you black out. My arms were just, you know, it's like I consider myself a strong swimmer. Like I free dive, you

87:05know, all this stuff. And I just, you know, it's like you read these stories about uh how people die, you know, of just like they succumb to hypothermia on a local hike or they drown in the bay, you know, and the story is always like, well, Timmy was a strong swimmer, but he and you're like, really, was Timmy really a strong swimmer because he drowned in the bay, you know, and like floating there, you know, it just all came to me. I'm like, wow, this is how this happens, you know? You just make a series of pretty dumb small decisions until you find yourself like floating in the dark in the bay. There's no one around. Holy [ __ ] And it's a really slow process, too. You know, it's like it's not like, you know, you just come to terms with the idea that like you're not going to make it. And it's not it's not sudden. It's not

87:45like someone shot you or you got hit by a bus or something like that. It's like this hourong thing that you're getting dragged through all alone. And you and you realize like no one will ever even know what this was, you know, how this happened. And you think about all the people like Joshua Sloum, Jim Gray, people who are lost at sea, and you realize they all had this thing that they went through, you know, this hour-long ordeal of just floating alone. And no one will even ever know what that was or what that was like, you know, and uh eventually I realized I wasn't going to make it to shore. I looked back, the boat was like way far away from me. I started, you know, drifting back towards it. I was still trying to swim. I I realized at some point that I wasn't going to hit it. I wasn't going to hit the boat on the way back downwind. And I had to just give it

88:30all that I had to try to connect with the boat, you know, to to to stop myself from getting blown past it. And in that moment too, you realize that like uncertainty is the most unendurable condition, you know, that like you imagine yourself making it to shore and relaxing, you know, just knowing that it's resolved, right? And in that moment of like I might not make it back to this boat, you're you're like tempted to give up because it's the same resolution. You know, it's the feeling of just knowing, you know, that the the uncertainties have been resolved, you know, and you have to really remind yourself that it's not the same, you know, that like you have to give it everything you have in order to survive, you know, and that that feeling that you're sort of longing for is not actually the feeling that you want, you know. Uh, and I just barely

89:13got the the end of a rope that was trailing off the the back of the hole, pulled myself back on it, almost threw up. Um, then I had to then I was just floating there with the with the the hole, you know, 3 ft underwater. I tied myself to it. Um I started to get tunnel vision and really at the last minute um I a tugboat uh started uh coming through the area and it was coming straight at me actually. And I I realized that it probably just wouldn't even see me. It would just run me over and not even know that I had been there. You know, it's totally possible. Um and I was just, you know, I was trying to like wave. I could barely lift my arm. I was trying to scream. I could barely make any noise. And somehow they saw me and uh they they like it took them like 15 minutes to like get a rope around me and they started pulling me up the side of the

90:03boat and it was like lining every tugboat is um tires like tires usually um as like a fender, you know, and I got like wedged in the tires as they were like pulling me up and I knew what was happening, you know, and I was like all I have to do is stick my leg out and push against the hole of the boat, you know, to like go around the tires and I couldn't do it. Wow. Uh, and I knew and I could barely see and they like swung me around and eventually pulled me up. They like put me in uh next to the engines in the engine room. I couldn't, you know, I couldn't even feel the heat. Uh, and they called the Coast Guard and the Coast Guard came and got me. It was like really embarrassing. And the Coast Guard like, you know, the Coast Guard guy is like, you know, he's like got all these blankets over me and he's like trying to like talk to me to like keep me like

90:46alert, you know, and uh and you know, he's like, "So, is this is this your first time sailing? [laughter] And I have like a commercial like like a 250 ton like master's license, you know, like it's like you need 600 days at SE to get this license, you know. Uh and I was like, no, I I have a master's license, you know. He was like, what? You're a [ __ ] idiot, man. You know, like everything changed. The tone totally changed, you know. Oh my god, dude. That's insane. Yeah. Uh, did that change your appreciation for comfort and safety and just life in general? Did it like Yeah, totally. I mean, it changed Well, you know, for sure. The next day I was like, um, you know, it's just like any near-death experience, I feel like you're just like, what are we doing here? You know, like what's the why are we wasting our time with this? You know, at the time I

91:40was working at Twitter, uh, and you know, you know, your co-workers are like, "Oh, we got this problem with the slave lag on the database." And you're just like, "What are we doing, man?" You know, shouldn't we be doing something else? You know, uh, but you can't I feel like you can't live like that for long, you know, that like the what are we doing, man? You know, the it's like it's impossible. The world will like suck you back into it. Yeah. Yeah, unless you go to Angila. [laughter] I mean, a lot of those early crypto people are actually still in Anguila. Really? Yeah. It's funny. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we were talking about sailing Anguila. Yeah. So, those those people the people who moved to Anguila um you know were part of this moment of like how much did that shift your direction in your life though? Did it did it change like the way like it seems almost

92:32I I mean I haven't had a near-death experience but I've had a lot of psychedelic experiences and in some ways I think they're kind of similar and that life shifts to the point where whatever you thought of life before that experience is almost like oh come on that's nonsense. Yeah, I mean it changes your perspective or it did for me and um you know because also in that moment you know it's like you know I think you go through this sort of embarrassing set of things where you're like oh I had these things I was going to do tomorrow like I'm not going to be able to do them you know and then you're like wait why why is that the thing that I'm concerned about you know it's like it's sort of trivial things yeah trivial you know we're just like oh I was going to see that person tomorrow I'm not going to see you know or it's just like

93:18you know Like I I feel like I remember I was supposed to meet somebody the next day. I remember being worried that they would think that I like stood them up or something. You know what I mean? Like that I You have the awesomest excuse ever. [laughter] I mean, just tell them that story the way you just told it to me and they're going to be like, "G, dude. We're good. [ __ ] [ __ ] Glad you're all right." Yeah. That kind of stuff, you know, and then and then you, you know, get more into the Yeah. It changes the way you think about things. And I and certainly, you know, it's like I was working at Twitter at the time and I think um it made me think about how I was spending my life and, you know, I was, you know, it's like the I mean even I I remember the first day that uh I was at Twitter um the at the time uh the most popular person

94:08on Twitter was Justin Bieber. He had more followers than any other person, you Was that when you guys were trying to rig it so that he wasn't uh trending number one always? Cuz they did do that, right? I don't remember that. No, I wasn't. I don't remember that. Conveniently, [laughter] cuz Jamie and I were talking about that one day cuz they had to do something because if they didn't do something, Justin Bieber would be the number one topic every day, no matter what was happening in the world. I can believe that they wanted to change that because the pro the problem was at the time Twitter was held together with like you know bubble gum and like dental floss or whatever you know so it's like every time Bieber would tweet like you know the lights would dim and like the building [laughter] would like kind of shake a little bit you know

94:50here it goes [clears throat] so they block me from trending this is 2010 I'm actually honored not even mad he's also 12 then I get on and see yet again my fans are unstoppable love you okay but okay so there's you know people talk about like invisible labor. Like the invisible labor behind that tweet is just kind of comical because it's like when he did that, you know, people like, you know, it's like my first day there, you know, it's like he he tweeted something and you know, the building's like kind of shaking and like alarms are going off, people are like scrambling around, you know, and it was just this, you know, it's like this realization where you're just like never in my life did I think that anything Justin Bieber did would like really affect me in any like deep way, you know, and then here I am just like scrambling around to like

95:33facilitate. What are your thoughts on curating what trends and what doesn't trend and whether or not social media should have any sort of obligation in terms of how things whether or not people see things like shadow banning and things along those lines? I'm very torn on this stuff because I I I think that things should just be and if you have a situation where Justin Bieber is the most popular thing on the internet, that's just what it is. It is what it is. But I also get it. I get how you would say, "Well, this is going to [ __ ] up our whole program." Like what we're trying to do with this thing. What do you mean [ __ ] up our whole program? Well, what you're trying to do with Twitter, I mean, I would assume what you're trying to do is give people a place where they could share important information and uh, you know, have

96:30people, you know, I mean, Twitter has been used successfully to overturn governments. I mean, there there's there's Twitter has been used to break news on very important events and alert people to danger. And there's there's so many positive things about Twitter. And if if it's overwhelmed by Justin Bieber and Justin Bieber fan accounts and Justin Bieber, if it's overwhelmed and the top 10 things that are trending are all nonsense, I could see how someone would think we're going to do a good thing by suppressing that. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Well, why do you think they did suppress that? What do you think? You worked there. Why do you think they kept him from trending? Um well I mean I don't know about that specific situation. I mean I think I think you know looking at the larger picture right like um in a way you know it's like if you think

97:31about like 20 years ago whenever anybody talked about like society you know um everyone would always say like the problem is the media. It's like the media, man. You know, if only we could change the media. And a lot of people in who were interested in like a better and brighter future were really focused on self-publishing. There were whole conferences about underground publishing conference, now the allied media conference. People were writing Zenes. Uh people were, you know, getting their own printing presses. uh people, you know, we we were convinced that if we um made publishing more equitable, if everybody had the equal ability to like produce and consume content, that the world would change. And in some ways, like what we have today is like the fantasy of, you know, those dreams from 20 years ago. Um, but in a couple ways, you know, like, uh,

98:26one, you know, it was it was it was the dream that if, you know, a cop kill some random person in the suburbs of St. Louis that like everyone would know about it, you know. Um, just, you know, everyone knows um and also that anybody could share their weird ideas about the world, you know. And I think in some ways um we were wrong. You know that we thought uh like you know the what we got today is like yeah like if a cop kills somebody in in the suburbs of St. Louis like everybody knows about it. I think we overestimated how much that would matter. Uh and I think we also believed that the things that everyone would be sharing were like our weird ideas about the world and instead we got like you know flat earth and uh like you know uh antivax and like you know this stuff right. Mhm. Uh and so it's like in a sense like I'm glad that those things exist because

99:17they're like they're sort of what we wanted, you know. Uh but I think what we did, what we underestimated is like how uh important the medium is, like the medium is the message kind of thing. and that like what we were doing at the time of like you know writing zenes and sharing information we I don't think we understood how much that was predicated on like actually building community and like relationships with each other and that like just um like what we didn't want was just like more channels on the television and that's sort of what we got you know uh and so I think you know it's like everyone is like on YouTube trying to monetize their content whatever you know and that it's the same thing you like bad business models produce like bad technology and bad outcomes And so I think there's concern about that. But I think um

100:07I think like you know now that there's there's like you know these two simultaneous truths that everyone seems to believe that are in contradiction with each other. You know like one is that like um everything is relative. Uh everyone is entitled to their own opinion. All opinions are equally valid. and two like um our democracy is impossible without a shared understanding of what is true and what is false. The information that we share needs to be verified by our most trusted institutions. You know like people seem to simultaneously believe both of these things and I think um they are in direct contradiction with each other. Um and so in some ways I think most of the questions about you know social media in our time are about like trying to resolve those contradictions. And but I think you know um I think it's way more complicated than the way uh

100:55that the social media companies are trying to portray it. Yeah. I think there's simplistic methods that they're using to um to handle complex realities like for instance like um uh banning QAnon, right? This is this is a big one, right? because QAnon's got these wacky theories and then like Jesus Christ these are weaponizing all these nut bags and like we're just going to ban Q anon but then well where do you because you think what they're saying is not true and not correct like how far do you go with that you've sort of set a precedent and where where does that end because you know are we going to ban JFK theories because JFK murderers are probably still relevant today some of those people are still alive do we ban uh there's There's theories about the Challenger, the the space shuttle Challenger. There's a lot of wacky conspiracy theories about the

101:52There's conspiracy theories about the space being fake. Have you ever seen hashtag space is fake? Yeah. Okay. Go on there. If you want if you want to really [ __ ] just lose all faith in humanity, look up space is fake. Oh my god, there's so many people. Yeah. And I think that people get something out of that. That Yeah, they do. Well, people get something out of mysteries and and maybe being on the inside and knowing things where the rest of the world is asleep. This is the reason why people love the idea of red pill. You know, someone even suggested I call this room the red pill. My friend Radio said, "Call it the red pill." I'm like, "Ah, there's a lot riding on that term." Too bad because I'm a giant fan of the Matrix, but that that term has been co-opted uh forever. Yeah. But this idea that you're just going to ban people from discussing

102:48stupid ideas, where does that end? You know, does it end with flat earth? You going to you're going to ban that? They're going to go, "Oh, they're suppressing us." And then they're going to find these alter. That's the thing about all these weird alternative sources of social media, whether it's Parlor or Gab, they become shitfests. You ever go to those, especially Gab, it's just like, god damn, what have you guys done? It's not even what have they done. It's what have the people done that have all been kicked out of all these other places. And then if you have a place that says we're not going to kick you out, and then all these [ __ ] cretins come piling into these places, and I'm sure there's a lot of good people on Gab, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of people that are they just didn't want to be suppressed by social media. Parlor

103:33doesn't seem to be nearly as bad. Uh, I've looked at that as well. It's more like just super right-wing information type stuff and there's some reasonable people on Parlor. But but I I I think that there's like a subtle thing there because I don't know how those things if you if you if you um set aside all of the like take down stuff, you know, all the deplatforming stuff, if you say like, okay, Facebook, Twitter, you know, these these companies like they they don't do that anymore. They've never done that. You know, they're still moderating content, you know, they have an algorithm decides like what is seen and what isn't, right? you know and in a way but what how is that all algorithm programmed like what is for Facebook and for YouTube and a lot of these things it's done to encourage viewership it's it's done to encourage interaction right this is the

104:30it's done to encourage time spent yes looking at the screen yes so that's how they monetize it they want more clicks and more more ad views and all that jazz um but when it becomes an ideological moderation That's when things get a little weird, right? But it it's it is by definition an ideological moderation. You know that the that the if you optimize for time spent looking at the screen, you're going to be encouraging certain kinds of content and not others. And okay, but that's not always true. Like I'll give you an example for us. Um we did a podcast with Kanye West. Kanye West was running for president, right? And if you were running for president and you were outside the norm, like for instance, Twitter banned Brett Weinstein's Brett Brett Weinstein had a um he had a Twitter account that was set up for it's was unity 2020. And the idea

105:24was like instead of looking at this in terms of left versus right, Republican versus Democrat, let's get reasonable people from both sides like a a Tulsi Gabbard and a Dan Krenshaw. Bring them together and perhaps maybe put into people's minds the idea that like this idea this concept of uh we it has to be a Republican vice president, a Republican president. Maybe that's nonsense and maybe it would be better if we had reasonable intelligent people together. What is this? their video. There's their video. Yeah. Um, well, it it's a very rational perspective. It's not conspiracy theorydriven. They got banned from Twitter and for what? For nothing just because they were promoting a third party because they were trying to come up with some alternative. The idea was this could siphon off votes from Biden. We want Biden to win because Trump is bad.

106:19This is the narrative, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that there's Man, there's a lot here. But the the Well, I was gonna say the con I got sidetracked. I'm sorry. Let me finish. The Kanye West thing. So, we had a podcast with Kanye West. Um, it got I don't know how many millions of views, but it was a lot, but it wasn't trending. And so, Jamie, you contacted the people at YouTube and asked them why it's trending. What was their answer? It's not trending. Um, it like it didn't meet the qualifications they decided for trending or something like that. No, like like it didn't include everything you would assume. Like you just said all the interactivity comments. It had it had more comments than any video we had. That's what I mean. Massive amounts of comments, massive amounts of views, but yet nowhere to be seen on the trending. But I don't think there was a person

107:09involved like there there was an algorithm involved that was trying to optimize for certain things in this case. You think this specific case? Yeah, there's a team there. There separate teams at YouTube of my understanding. Yeah. And this separate team had made a distinction and I don't even know if they told the person who told me that what it was. So he that person may not know either. So they just decided this is not worthy of trending. So you have arbitrary decisions that are being made by people most likely because they feel that ideologically Kanye West is not aligned with I mean he's was wearing the MAGA hat for a while. It's a lot of you know so they just decided this is not trending but it is trending. It's clearly trending. Yeah. It got millions and millions and millions of people were watching it. Whether there, you know, it's like

107:57whether there are, but I think this is the point, you know, it's like whether there whether it's people, whether it's algorithms, you know, there are forces that are making decisions about what people see and what people don't see, and they're based on uh certain objectives that I think are most often business objectives, but not in this case. This case, the business objective was if they wanted to get more eyeballs on it, they would want it to be trending. And people's like, "Oh [ __ ] Kanye West is on the Jerry." Do people that like Kanye like click on ads or not? You know, it's like do people that, you know, it's like there's there's a lot there's a lot in there that we don't know, you know. Well, that's horshit. Come on, bro. I don't know. I mean, maybe, you know, maybe have millions and mill when you have a video that's being viewed by that

108:37many people, there's going to be a lot of goddamn people clicking on ads no matter what. I mean, the other thing that these platforms want is for their for the content to be ad safe. you know, it's like maybe advertisers don't, you know, it's like I don't I don't know. It's but I think actually focusing on the like the outlying cases of like this person was deplatformed, this person was intentionally ideologically not um promoted or you know deemphasized shadow banning. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of I think that that like offiscates or you know uh draws attention away from the larger thing that's happening which is that like um those things are happening just implicitly all the time and that like it it almost like serves to the advantage of these platforms to highlight the times when they remove somebody because what they're trying to

109:24do is reframe this is like okay well yeah we've got these algorithms or whatever don't don't talk about that the problem is there's just these bad people you know and we have to dec there's bad content from bad people and we have to decide, you know, what to do about these bad this bad content and these bad people. Um, and I think that distracts people from the the fact that like the platforms are every in every moment making a decision about what you see and what you don't see that um is not as apparent. You know, I see what you're saying. Um, so there's more than one problem. There's a problem of deplatforming because in many ways he's deplatforming decisions are being made based on ideology. It's a certain specific ideology that the people that are deplatforming the other folks have that doesn't align with the the people that are being deplatformed. These

110:13people that are being deplatformed, they have ideas that these people find offensive or they don't agree with. So they say, "We're going to take you off." Yeah. Or sometimes they just find themselves in a trap. you know that like a trap. Well, I think that there's like [sighs] okay so like there's I think a tendency for a lot of these platforms to you know make try to define some policy about like what it is that they want and they don't want you know and I feel like that's sort of a throwback to this like modernist view of science and how science works and we can like objectively and rigorously define these things. Um, and I just don't think that's actually how the world works and that like how so what do you mean how so? Um, I feel like we're just past that, you know, that it's not like um, first of all, I think, you know, science is

111:02not about truth. It's just not. It's about utility. What do you mean? Do you agree? Um, okay. You know, it's like I was taught Newtonian physics in high school. Okay. Why? It's not true. you know, we that's not how the universe works. Um, but it's still useful and that's why it's taught because you can use it to predict motion outcomes, that kind of thing, right? What's incorrect about Newtonian physics in the sense that they shouldn't be teaching it? Um, I mean, today, you know, people believe that the truth is that, you know, there's like, you know, relativity like gravity is not a force. There's like, you know, these planes and stuff, whatever, you know, that like there other models to describe how the universe works. Um and Newtonian physics is considered outmoded but it still has utility in the fact that you can use it to predict the

111:48so you're talking about in terms of quantum physics and string theory and a lot of these more yeah it's like relativity at like the large scale quantum you know quantum physics at the the small scale and even those things are most likely not true in the sense that they aren't consistent with each other and people are trying to unify them and find something that does make sense at like both of those scales. you know that the history of science is the history of things that weren't actually true. You know, Bor's model of the atom, physics, like you know, people have these uh you know, Capernicus' model of the solar system. People have these ideas of like how things work. And the reason that people are drawn to them is because they actually have utility that it's like, oh, we can use this to predict the motion of the planets. Oh,

112:25we can use this to send a rocket into space. Oh, we can use this to uh, you know, have better outcomes, you know, for some medical procedure or whatever. But it's not actually um I don't I I think it's not actually truth. Like the point of it isn't truth. The point of it is that like we have some utility that we find in these things. And I think that um you know when you look at like the the emergence of science um and you know people conceiving of it as a truth, it became this new authority that everyone was trying to appeal to. you know, if you look at like all of the like 19th century polit political philosophy, uh, I mean, okay, I think the question of truth is like, you know, it's even a little squishy with the hard sciences, right? But once you get into like soft sciences like social science, psychology, like then it's even squishier, you know,

113:17that like these things are really not about truth. They're about like some kind of utility. And when you're talking about utility, the important question is like useful for what and to whom, you know, and I think that's just always the important question to be asking, right? Um because, you know, when you look at like all the 19th century political writing, it's all trying to frame things in terms of science in this way that it seems laughable now, but you know, like at the time they were just like, we're going to prove that communism is like the most true like social economic system in the world, you know, like their whole disciplines of that. people in uh you know people had like PhDs in that you know their whole research departments uh in the Soviet Union people doing that and we laugh about that now but I don't think it's that different than like

113:57social science in the west you know um and so I think you know it's like if you lose sight of that then you can try then you try to like frame social questions in terms of truths like you know it's like this is this is the kind of content that we want and we can rigorously define that and we can define why that's going to have like the outcomes that we want it to But once you get down that road, it's like, you know, you're like, "Okay, well terrorist stuff. We don't like terrorist stuff, so we're going to like rigorously define that." And then, uh, we have a policy, no terrorist stuff. And then, you know, China shows up. And they're like, "We've got this problem with terrorists, the weaguers, you know, we need, you know, we see you have a policy. to her, you know, and if instead it was just like I think if people from the beginning

114:39acknowledged that uh this isn't some, you know, that all of objectivity is just a particular worldview and that like we're not going to rigorously define these things in a way of like what is true and what isn't, then I think we would have better outcomes. But that's my weird take. I mean, I think, you know, from the perspective of Signal, you know, it's like, do you know what's trending on Signal right now? No, not do I. Yeah. Okay. But that's it's on a social media platform. But but isn't it there's a weird thing when you decide that you have one particular ideology that's being supported and another particular ideology that is being suppressed. And this is what conservative people feel when they're on uh social media platforms. They're almost all the almost all of them other than the ones we talked about before, Parlor and Gab and

115:27the alternative ones. They're all very left-wing in terms of their the ideology that they support, the things that can get you in trouble in uh Twitter on Twitter. Um you say, but but then the president of the United States just constantly violated every policy that they had. And but he's ridiculous. That's that's a ridiculous example, right? Because he's one person and they they've actually discussed this that he and his tweets are more important. It's more important that they allow these tweets to get out so you could first of all you could understand how [ __ ] crazy this guy is and second of all it's newsworthy. It's he's the leader of the the you know and also it would be um very costly from a business perspective if very likely and kind of amazing that he didn't do anything along the way while he was witnessing people get

116:22deplatformed and particularly this this sort of bias towards people uh on the left and this discrimination discrimination against people on the right. There's people on the right that have been banned and shadowbanned and and blocked from posting things and you run into this situation where you wonder what exactly is a social media platform when it's just a small private company and maybe you have uh you know uh some sort of a video platform and there's only a few thousand people on it and you only want videos that align with your perspective. Okay, you're a private company. You can do whatever you want. But when you're the biggest video platform on earth like YouTube and you decide that you are going to take down anything that disagrees with your perspective on how COVID should be handled in in including doctors like this is one of the things that happened

117:19doctors that were stating look there's more danger in lockdowns there's more danger in this than there is in the way we're handling it. There's more there's more danger in the the the negative aspects of the decisions that are being made than it would be to let people go to work with masks on. There's more and then those those videos just get deleted. Those videos get blocked. There's people that are opposed to current strategies with uh all sorts of different things and those videos get blocked. So there's an ideological basis in censorship. And so you have to you have to make a decision like what are these platforms? Are these platforms simply just a private company or is it a town hall? Is it the the way that people get to express ideas? And isn't the best way to express ideas to allow people to decide based on the better argument what

118:17is correct and what's incorrect? Like this is this is what freedom of speech is supposed to be about. It's supposed to be about you have an idea, I have an idea. These two ideas come together and then the observers get to go, okay, well, this guy's got a lot of facts behind him. This is this is a objective reality. This is the this this is provable and this other guy is just a crazy person who thinks the world's hollow. Okay, this is the correct one. There's going to be some people that go, "No, this is a suppression of hollow earth and hollow earth is the truth and hollow earth facts and hollow earth the but you got to kind of let that happen. You gota you gota kind of have people that are crazy. You gota kind of remember the the old dude that used to be they used to stand on the corners with the placards on the world is ending tomorrow. Like

118:59they're still there. Yeah. But those are on Twitter now, right? But those people No one said you got to get rid of that guy. You would drive by and go look at this crazy [ __ ] Those crazy [ __ ] making YouTube videos, those videos get deleted. I don't know if that's good. I kind of think that you should let those crazy [ __ ] do that because it's not going to influence you. It's not going to influence me. It's going to influence people that are easily influenced. And the question is what who are we protecting and why are we protecting these people? Well, okay. But I think I think in my mind what's going on is like the problem is that it used to be that some person with very strange ideas about the world wearing a sign on the street corner shouting was just a person with very strange ideas about the world wearing a

119:44sign on the street. Now there's somebody, you know, with very strange ideas about the world and those ideas are being amplified by a billion dollar company uh because they're algorithms that amplify that. And and what I'm saying is that instead of actually talking about that, instead of addressing that problem, those companies are trying to distract uh distract that distract us from that discussion by saying, "We're just going to remove that person's content." Okay. Oh, it's like, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, amplifying that. That was probably a bad idea. we're going to remove their content instead of looking at how to change the algorithm so that we're not amplifying things that uh ultimately don't serve us well. Would the correct way to handle it would be to make algorithms illegal in that respect like to not be able to amplify or detract to not be able to ban

120:35shadowban or just to have whatever trends trend. Whatever is popular, popular. Whatever people like, let them like it. And and say, "Listen, this thing that you've done by creating an algorithm that encourages people to interact, encourages people to interact on Facebook, encourages people to spend more time on the computer, what you've done is you've kind of distorted what is valuable to people. You've changed it and and and and guided it in a way that is ultimately perhaps arguably detrimental to society. So, we are going to ban algorithms. You cannot use algorithms to dictate what people see or not see. You give them a [ __ ] search bar and you if they want to look up UFOs, let them look up UFOs, but don't shove it down their throat because you know they're a UFO nut. Don't don't curate their content feed. Yeah. I mean,

121:27I think it's okay. It's complicated because um one I have no faith in like when you say ban or make it illegal or whatever I have zero faith in like the government being able to handle this nor do I every time I see like a cookie warning on a website you know I'm like okay these people are not the people that this is what they've given us after all this time you know it's like these people are not going to solve this for us you know and and also I think a lot of what it is that the satisfaction that people feel and the discomfort that people feel and the concern concern that people have is a concern about power. um that right now these tech companies have a lot of power and I think that the the [snorts] concern that is coming from government is like the concern for their power you know that like the right has made such a big deal about deplatforming

122:17and I think it's because what they're trying they're trying to um they're trying to you know put these companies on notice you know that it's like you [ __ ] with us you know like we will take power and but they've done nothing about it. Don't you think that they've actually made a big deal about deplatforming because the right has been disproportionately deplatformed? Um, I think the right is like doing fine uh on social media. I I don't know. I don't know what the numbers are, but I I feel like it's like that though because you're on Trump was still on [snorts] Trump. That's Trump. He's It's not He's an anomaly. you you you can't really you know I okay I I think I guess maybe let me just reframe this to say that like I think it's interesting that we are we've hit an inflection point right where like the era of utopianism with regards to

123:08technology is over you know that it's just like you know after 2016 it was just like big tech has zero allies anymore you know on the left everyone's just like you just gave the election to Trump you know and on the right they're just like you just removed somebody from YouTube for calling gay people an abomination [ __ ] you you know like it's they have no allies uh no one believes in the better and brighter you know no one believes that Google is organizing the world's information no one believes that Facebook is connecting the world you know like no and I think that that is um there's an opportunity there you know that like we're in a better situation that we were before you know all the cards are on the table under like people more and more understanding uh how it is that these systems function I think you know we increasingly see that people

123:51understand that this is clearly about power. It's about authority and that like we should be trying to build things that limit the the power that people have. If you had your wish, if you could let these social media platforms, whether it's uh video platforms like YouTube or Facebook or Twitter, if you if you had the call, if they they called you up and said, "Moxy, we're going to let you make the call. What should we do? How should we curate this information? Should we have algorithms? Should we allow people? Should we just let it open to everything? Everything and anybody? What should we do? Well, I mean, this is what we're trying to do with Signal, you know? It's like, but it's different, right? Cuz you're just a messaging app. We're just a messaging app. But I don't say that and it's a very good messaging app that I use.

124:39No, I understand what you're saying. But I think, you know, the way that messaging apps are going, you know, there's like a trajectory where uh a project like Sigma becomes more of a social experience. Um and that like the things that we're building extend beyond just like you know sending messages particularly I think as more and more communication moves into group chats and things like that. Um and the you know the foundation that we're building it on is a foundation where we know nothing. You know it's like if I looked up your signal account record right now of like all the information that we had about you on Signal there's only two pieces of information. You know the date that you created the account and the date that you last used Signal. That's it. That's all we know. you know, if you looked on any other platform, it would be your mind would be blown.

125:22No, it's admirable what you're doing and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you. But that and so I think that foundation gives us um it's like now that we have that foundation, there's a lot that we can build on it, right? And would you do a social media app? Well, I think you know some of the stuff that we're working on now of just like moving away from phone numbers so you can have like you know a username so that you can like post that more publicly and then you know we have groups now you have group links and then you know maybe we can do something with events and we can you know that's like we're sort of moving in the direction of like an app that's good for um communicating with connections you already have to an app that's also good for creating new connections. Would you think that social media would be better

126:03served with the algorithms that are in place and with the mechanisms for determining what's trending in place and for their trust and safety or whatever their their content monitoring policy they have now or have it wide open wild west? [laughter] I mean I think um it depends on when you say like better you know better for what right better for humanity. Uh yeah no I I think censorship is better. No no no I I think the problem I think bad business models create bad technology which has bad outcomes. You know that that's the problem we have today. Right. So the problem is that there's a financial incentive for them to yeah that that if if if we you know if you look at like the the metrics you know that we've talked about like you know what Facebook cares about is just like time that you spent looking at the screen on Facebook you know

126:56like if if we were to have metrics if Signal were to have metrics you know our metrics would be like what we want is for you to use the app as little as possible for you to actually have the app open as little as possible but for the velocity of information to be as high as possible. So it's like you're getting maximum utility. you're spending as little time possible looking at this thing while getting as much out of it as you can. How could that be engineered? Do you think that's what we're trying to do? You know, so you're trying to do that with a social media app as well. Well, I mean, you know, we're sort of moving in that direction, right? And it's like um and I think once you start from the principle of like, well, we don't have to have infinite growth. We don't actually have to uh have profit. We don't have to return uh we're not

127:33accountable to investors. We don't have to, you know, uh satisfy public markets. Uh we also don't have to build a pyramid scheme where we have like you know two billion users so that we can monetize them to like you know a few hundred thousand advertisers so that we can you know right like we don't have to do any of that. Uh and so we have the the freedom to like pick the metrics that we think are the ways that we think technology should work that should that we think will better serve all of us. So what would better be served is a bunch of wild hippies like yourself that don't want to make any money at all. I mean, we're you put together social media. If you work at Signal, you get paid. Oh, yeah. I'm sure. But I mean I don't mean the company itself. Yeah. As a uh as a corporation, you get paid, but that's it. Yeah. I mean, and how do you generate the income?

128:19Well, you know, we do it by like tying ourselves to a community of users instead of advertisers, right? You know, by where's the money coming from though? From people who use Signal. So, uh similar similar to like uh do they pay for it? No, no, it's like donation based. So, similar to like Wikipedia, you know, it's like, you know, Wikipedia exists. There's no company, there's no Well, that would be great if they could figure out a way to develop some sort of a social media platform that uh just operated on donations and could rival the ones that are operating on advertising revenue because I agree with you that that that creates a giant problem. Oh, yeah. And that's what we're working on slowly. Uhhuh. Do you think that what so you you just look at in terms of bad business model equals bad outcome? That's how you look at all these and you don't

129:09and it's also by the way why we have people mining cobalt in Yeah. Congo. Yeah. And you don't think that they can regulate their way out of this situation with technology? I'm I'm not super optimistic. Yeah. Just based on, you know, and even even the hearings, you know, it's just like So, do you think that Yes. the hearings were amateur hour. Yeah. When uh Yeah. There was some ridiculous questions. Yeah. I mean, it's just like they're talking to the wrong people. They don't understand how stuff works. That's not Google. You've been prepped for this. Like you don't you have a team of people who Yeah. Come on. Yeah. [snorts] It's um it's fascinating to watch, right? It's like your your dad who doesn't know how to how do I get the email? [laughter] It's like these people are not going to save us, man. you know, and it's like anything that they do will probably just

129:55make things worse. Do you think that it's a valid argument that conservatives have though that they're being censored and that their their voice is not being heard? I I I know what you said in terms of, you know, that if someone had something on YouTube that said that gay people are unhuman and they should be abolished and banned and and delete that video that the I I get that perspective, but I think there's other perspectives like the Unity 2020 perspective, which is not in any way Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't know what happened with that, but I feel like what I I think it could be a part of this thing of just like, well, we create this policy and we have these, you know, we define things this way and then a lot of stuff just gets caught up in it, you know, where it's just like now you're like taking down content about the weaguers because you wanted to do

130:40something else. You know, that if people just be more honest about like there is not really an objectivity and you know, we're looking for these specific outcomes and this is why that I think you know, maybe we would have better results. But well, how does one fix this though? How does one like you worked at Twitter, you kind of understand these better than most these uh social media platforms. How would one fix this if you if they hired you if they said, "Hey, uh Moxy, we're kind of [ __ ] We don't know to how to fix this." Well, uh is there a way? Because it seems like they they make so much money. If you came along and said, "Yeah, well, you got to stop making money." They'd be like, "Get rid of that [ __ ] nut. Look at him, goddamn sailor." What's he talking about? What is he talking about? [ __ ] out of here. Stop making money.

131:25Yeah. Well, you want to play rock, go. You're crazy, man. How do you fix this? I mean, one thing I'm actually a little encouraged by is like um the organizing union unionization stuff that's been happening in the tech industry. Uh so there's been um a couple of walkouts um and there's some increased communication among tech tech workers. Uh normally you think about um I'm not totally aware of this like what have they been organizing and uh unionization about well normally you think about um unionization as as like a process for improving material conditions for workers you know uh and there's some aspect of this uh in the organizing that's been happening where they where have they been doing this uh Google is the big um where a lot of the activity has happened but it's happening across the industry uh and what are their objectives at Google at

132:21Google. Uh there were some walkouts. Um the objectives, you should talk to Meredith Whitaker about this actually. Um she's really smart and has a lot to say. Shout out to Meredith. Yeah. Uh she uh and other people, you know, were working there and um they were organizing for like one uh trying to apply the protections that full-time workers and benefits of full-time workers there had to a lot of the temporary workers like the people who work in security, the people who were working in the cafeteria, the people who were working, you know, driving buses and stuff like that, uh who are living a lot more precariously. uh but also um for creative control over how the technology that they're producing is used. Uh so Google was involved in some like military contracts that were pretty um sketch. Yeah. Like applying machine learning AI stuff

133:12to military technology. And then uh finally uh there had been a lot of um high-profile sexual harassment uh incidents at Google where the the perpetrators of sexual harassment were um usually paid large severances uh in order to leave. Uh and so they they had a list of demands uh and they uh like a lot of people walked out. I don't know what the numbers were but a lot of people they managed to organize internally and and walked out. And I think I think stuff like that is encouraging because um you know it's like we look at the hearings and it's like the pe the people in Congress don't even know who's the right person to talk to. You know it's like you know old people talking about technology they don't understand. The people who really do understand technology are the people who are working in these companies and a lot of times they don't feel good about

134:02the way that that what they're creating is being applied. How they're how what they're creating is being applied. And um but isn't that another issue where you're going to have people who have an ideological perspective and that may be opposed to people that have a different ideological perspective, but they're sort of disproportionately represented on the left in these social media corporations. When you get kids that come out of school, they have degrees in tech or they're interested in tech, they tend to almost universally lean left, maybe. I think most like when it comes to the technology I don't think people are um I think you know what almost everyone can agree is like the amount of money and resources that we're putting into surveillance into ad tech into you know these algorithms that are just about increasing engagement that they're just

134:56not good for the world and if you put a different CEO in charge that person's just going to get fired you know but if a if the entire company organizes together and says no this is what we want this is how we this this is how we want to allocate resources. This is how we want to create the world. Then you can't fire all those people. I understand what you're saying. So they'd have to get together and unionize and and have like a very distinct mandate like very clear that this is what we we want to use this. We want to go back to do no evil or whatever the [ __ ] it used to be, right? Yeah. Where they don't really have that as a big sign anymore. Um do you think that would really have an impact though? I mean, there's it seems like the amount of money when you find out the amount of money that's being generated by Google and Facebook and uh

135:41and YouTube and all it's the the numbers are so staggering that to shut that valve off to like to shut that spout good luck. It's almost like it had to have been engineered from the beginning like what you're doing at Signal. like someone had to look at it from the beginning and go, you know what, if we rely on advertiser revenue, we're gonna have a real problem. Yeah. And I think but I think it's Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, I think you're right. And there's there's um you know, part of the problem with just relying on tech workers to to organize themselves is that they are shareholders of these companies. You know, they have a financial stake in their their outcome and so um that influences the way that they think about things. But um you know I think another aspect to all of this is that I think people underestimate just how expensive it is

136:34to make software. And another thing that I think would really uh improve things is making software cheaper. You know right now it's it's moving the opposite direction. It's getting harder more expensive to produce software. Um and how so? It used to be that if you made if you like wrote a piece of software you just wrote it once you know for the computer and then that was your software you know. Now, if you want to write a piece of software, you have to write it at least three times. You know, you have to write it for iPhone, you have to write it for Android, you have to write it for the web, maybe you need a desktop client. Uh, so it's like you need three or four times the this the energy that you used to have. Um, and the way that um software works, not worth going into, but it's just it's getting more expensive. And what do you what do you personally use?

137:20Are you one of those minimalist dudes? got I noticed you have like a little tiny notebook here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then you have two phones. Yeah. I I'm like I have to have I'm I try to be like I just want to You're also one of those renegades with no phone case. Oh yeah, man. I feel like that's like you and Jamie should get together and talk about it. He's radical. I mean, it's like people, you know, it's like [laughter] industrial designers put all of that effort into creating that thing and just glass and it cost a thousand bucks. If you drop it with this thing on it, it doesn't get hurt. And see this this little thing right here. See, I stick my finger in there and I can use a text better. Really good. Yeah. And then also if I want to watch a video that like that'll prop it up, you know. Tada. You know how that works. Tada.

138:08Is that better? Isn't that better than no case? I mean, some things I actually want to make more difficult for myself, you know. Um, but I have two phones just cuz I'm trying to I always just want to keep tabs on how everything works everywhere, you know. So, you have an Android and a uh an iPhone. Do you keep things stripped down? No, I'm pretty I mean I don't actually use Tik Tok. Well, okay. My problem is that like I spend all day I think you know sometimes I I go through this thing where like um cryptography will be like in the news or something. There'll be some like geopolitical thing that's happening and someone like you know Vice or something will get in touch with me and they'll be like they'll be like hey we want to do a thing like a video where like we follow you around for a day like a day in the life you know it's because it's so exciting.

138:50Sounds good for them. Annoying for you. Well the thing I'll usually write back is like um okay uh here's the video me sitting in front of a computer for eight hours and they're like oh we can't make that video. Like no one would want to watch that you know. Yeah. What we need to do is take you to a yoga class and you go to an organic food store and you talk to people about their rights and then Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. But it's like unfortunately I don't even want to watch the movie of my own life, you know. Uh but there um but so that is my life. So it's like um I spend so much time like you know looking at a computer for work that I it's hard for me to continue like looking at screens and stuff. Yeah. I can only imagine. Yeah. But I try to be like a normal like um there's this like in the history of people who were like doing

139:42like building cryptography stuff like that. Um there was this period of time where the thesis was basically like all right what we're going to do is develop really powerful tools for ourselves and then we're going to teach everyone to be like us you know and that didn't work uh because uh you know we didn't really anticipate the way that computers are going. So I try to be like as normal as possible you know I just like have like a normal setup. I'm not like, you know, I haven't, you know, I used to have a cell phone where I like, you know, soldered the microphone differently, so there was like a hard switch that you could turn it off, whatever. It's like Yeah, cuz it's like, you know, whatever. You start thinking about like how all this stuff works. Do you ever [ __ ] around with like Linux phones or anything like that?

140:19No. No, I'm just I try to be like normal, you know. Okay. Yeah, I still do run Linux on a desktop just because I've been doing that forever, but And you keep a mole skin for what? Just notes. And you don't put them on your phone. Sometimes I do, but so I like writing more, I guess. Okay. So, you just do it just because you enjoy it. Yeah. But I guess, you know, you're right. Maybe, you know, like I feel the forces of darkness are not going to Yeah. Um, does it do you feel like you have extra scrutiny on you because of the fact that you're involved in this messaging application that Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden and a bunch of other people that are seriously concerned with security and privacy that maybe people are upset at you that you've uh created something that allows people to uh share encrypted messages. I mean, maybe. I mean, I think uh

141:22you've kind of cut out the middleman, right? You've cut out you've cut out the the third party door. Yeah. And I think but so in some ways that means that there's less pressure on me because, you know, it's like if you're the creator of Facebook Messenger and your computer gets hacked, like that's everyone's Facebook messages are, you know, gone. Um and you know for me if like my computer gets hacked I can't access anyone's signal messages whether I get hacked or not you know and so it's I have sort of less liability in that sense there was like a weird period of time where um it was very difficult for me to fly commercially like on a airplane um and I don't know why uh I think it had something to do with uh a talk that someone gave about Wikileaks once and they mentioned my name and uh after that getting flagged yeah it was very annoying. I would like

142:11go to the airport and I would I wouldn't be able to print a ticket at the kiosk. I had to go uh talk to a person. They had to call some phone number that would appear on their screen and then wait on hold for like 45 minutes to an hour to get approval and then they would get approval to print the ticket. So you had to anticipate this when you travel. So you had to go there way in advance. Way in advance. And then anytime I traveled internationally on the way back through customs, they would seize all of the electronics that I had and propagate them. Yeah. The US government would do this. Yeah. Customs important protection. They would seize your [ __ ] and would you get it back? They would eventually send it back, but it's you just had to throw it out because it's not Who knows what they did to it, you know? How I would want to give it to someone

142:50and go, "Hey, tell me what they did." Yeah. Yeah. Could you do that? Is it possible to back engineer what whatever? I never I never spent the time on it. How much time did they have your [ __ ] for? Uh, it would be like weeks. Weeks? Yeah. Yeah. Weeks. Did you have to give them passwords and everything? Well, that was the thing. you know, they would stop you and they would be like, "Hey, we just need you to type in your password here so that we can get through the full disc encryption, you know, and I would be like, "No." And they would be like, "Well, if you don't do that, we're going to take this and we're going to send it to our lab, you know, and they're going to get it anyway." And I would be like, "No, they're not." And they would be like, "All right, we're going to take it. You're not going to have your stuff for a while. You sure

143:22you don't want to type your password?" I'd be like, "Nope." And then, you know, it would disappear and it come back weeks later and then it's like, how bizarre. Yeah. And with there was no they didn't have like a motive. There was no That's the thing. You never know why. You know why? No, but I'm saying they didn't they didn't say, "Hey, you were you're thought to have done this or there's some No, they would always just be like, "Oh, no, this is just random or whatever." But there would be two people at the exit of the plane with photographs of me, you know, waiting for me to step off the plane and then they would escort. They wouldn't even wait for me to get to the uh So, did you have to have like a burner laptop? I just wouldn't travel with electronics, you know, because it was just even your phone. Yeah, even my phone. Oh, [ __ ] Yeah.

144:07Yeah. If that was only internationally, though, because they they can't do that domestically. But, uh, so domestically, you just had long waits and then they'd eventually give you a ticket. Yeah, they would eventually give you a ticket and then you'd have to you'd get the selective screening where they would take all the stuff out of your bag and like, you know, feel through your car. That's your dick, too, right? And at every connection, the TSA would come to the gate of the connecting thing, even though you're already behind security and do it again at the connection. Really? Yeah. I don't know. It was weird. It was just like a connections, too. Yeah. Yeah. So, they're trying to [ __ ] with you, I think. So, yeah. I don't know what that And how long did that last for? That was a couple years. Yeah. And when did it go away? The day it went

144:46away, were you like, "Oh, yep." Yeah. One day it just stopped. That was It's really It really did change the game. What year did it go away? When Trump got into office? No, it was way before that. [laughter] Yeah, I forget. Uh, yeah, I forget. Yeah, I was thinking actually on I was thinking on the way here, it's funny how like I remember after the last election, everyone was talking about like California leaving the United States like California seceding. You remember that? And now everyone's talking about leaving California like after this election. Yeah. Imagine that. President Nuome Yeah. locked down a communist state. But do you remember people discovered that the Calexit the whole Calexit movement was started by a guy that lived in Russia? Oh, it was one of those uh IRA things, internet research agency scams. But it wasn't. I actually tracked the

145:33guy down [snorts] uh in Moscow one time. You tracked him down. He's just some guy. Well, did he do it for a goof? No, he like really believes uh that California should leave. Yeah, he he like he he [snorts] lived in California and had been for years like trying to ferment this calexit thing and he saw all the stats on like you know why it would be better for California and all this stuff you know uh and then he sort of thought well this isn't working and he really liked Russia for some reason he and he so he moved to Russia just before the election not knowing what was going to happen and then when Trump won people were like wait a second [ __ ] this like maybe California should get out of here and they just found this like campaign that already existed and everyone sort of got behind it and he was just like oh [ __ ]

146:16and he lives in Russia now you know and and but he like didn't really understand um optics I think where he like he like the re the way that people everyone found out that uh he lived in Russia was that he opened a California embassy in Moscow. So they like announced like you know has opened the first California embassy like in a foreign country but it was in Moscow and this was right as all the like Russian like stuff was happening you know. Yeah. So, if you're conspiratorally minded, you would have drawn some incorrect conclusions. Yeah. Yeah. He was just I think I I met with him. I like hung out with him for a day. I think he really genuinely just So, what was your motivation to hang out with this guy for a whole day? I mean, I was just fascinated, you know, because here's this guy who's like doing this kind of ambitious thing and it just

147:00the optics seems so bad, you know? I think he he reminded me of like that Hannah Arent quote that's like um you know if the essence of power is deceit does that mean that the essence of impotence is truth you know that like he sort of believed that um just like the facts were enough you know just like the stats of just like yeah we spend this much money on like defense spending if we you know if we stopped you know it's like we would have like you know so much money if California was a country and we would still have like the fourth largest military in the world and we you know we would have like uh you know it's just like the numbers was actually are compelling, you know, and he was just sort of like that's, you know, people will just see the truth, you know, and I was like, dude, I think maybe you should like not live in Russia anymore, you

147:41know, but [laughter] uh it was dude. Yeah. Why did he go to Russia? I don't He just He had been teaching English and uh I think he just sort of ended up liking Russia. Um and so yeah, he just decided to move there and didn't That was I was on the way um with a friend to Abcazia. Have you ever heard of that place? No. It's an autonomous region of the country of Georgia. Uh, and uh, it's kind of interesting. There's all these autonomous regions in the world uh, that are essentially their own countries, you know. Um, but they're not recognized by the UN or other countries, you know, like Texas. You're in one right now. Uh, I mean, these places are like, you know, militarized border, like they have their own, you know, like, you know, uh, but they're not recognized by the UN. Yeah. Uh, and so they all recognize each other. And it's like, you know, it's

148:29like if you want to be a country, like it's kind of interesting. You need a lot of stuff, you know. You need like a flag, you need like a national bird, you need like an anthem or whatever. And you need a soccer team. You definitely have to have a soccer team, you know. Uh so these countries all have their own soccer teams, but they can't play in FIFA because they're not recognized by the UN. So FIFA can't recognize them. So they had their own league. It's like the league of unrecognized states and stateless peoples. Uh, and they had their own World Cup and they had the rest in abcasia. How many different countries are there that are like this? There are a lot. Uh, how many? I mean, I don't know. I don't know how many pe how many teams are in this league called Khanifa. Um, I mean, it's 20 plus. So, there's 20 plus unrecognized countries or autonomous regions

149:15and also stateless people. So, like um the Kurds, you know, um there's a you people from Chagos Islands were basically evicted for a US military base in their diaspora. There's um you know places like Somaliand, Transnistria, um South Asessia, uh Lapalandia, you know like um it's it's kind of interesting. So I I went with a friend to Okazia for the the World Cup of all the unrecognized states. How was that? It was awesome. Yeah, it was like Yeah, it was really I mean the smile on your face. This is the biggest smile you've had the entire show. It sounds like it was a great time. I mean, it just is so fascinating to me and I think it's like an interesting, you know, it's like in a way that I feel like, you know, society moves by like pushing at the edges, you know, that like it's it's the fringes that end up moving the center.

150:05I feel like um, you know, looking at the margins of the way politics works is an interesting view of like how everything else works. You know, that like like going to Abcasia, it was so crazy getting there. You know, it's like, you know, travel all through Russia, we get to this like militarized border. You go through these three checkpoints that aren't supposed to exist but obviously exist. You know, you get to the other side and it's just the same as where you just were. You know, you're like, you guys fought a brutal civil war, you know, with like genocide, like fullon, you know, like crazy [ __ ] Uh, and it's just kind of the same, you know, like was it worth it? Like what's the deal, you know? And I feel like it's this thing you see again and again of like um like the institutions that we're familiar with of in the world that

150:51exists are like the institutions of kings, you know. It's like, you know, police, military, illegal apparatus, tax collectors, you know, and that like every moment in history since then has been about trying to like change ownership of those institutions. Mhm. And it's always sort of dissatisfying, you know, and like, you know, just seeing that happen again and and just like, you know, realizing that it's like maybe what we should be doing is actually trying to get rid of these institutions or change these institutions in some way. Don't you [snorts] think there's a very slow rate of progress, but ultimately progress? Like if you follow Pinker's work, it looks at all the various metrics like murder, rape, racism, crime, all these different things. It's over time this we're clearly moving in a better direction maybe. I mean, and

151:42do you think it's just like, you know, I was listening to this uh um podcast today. They're talking about uh religion and it was discussing um the Bible and they were talking about all the different um stories that are in the Bible that many of them that are that are hundreds of years apart that are that were collected and put into that. Just stop and think about a book that was written literally before the Constitution was drafted and that book is being introduced today as gospel and that there's a new book that's going to be written 200 years from now and that will be attached to the new version of the Bible as well. And then one day someone will come across this and it'll all be interpreted as the the will and the words of God that all came about in in one particular era. It like all came down from God. But now we know these

152:38things have like this there's you're dealing with giant Yeah. spans of time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But today, the these spans of time are far slower. Like going from Allan Turing in 1950 being chemically castrated for being gay to in my lifetime seeing gay marriage as being something that was very fringe when I was a boy living in San Francisco to universal across the United States today, at least mostly accepted by the populace. Right. that this is a a very short amount of time where a big change has happened and that this these changes are coming quicker and quicker and quicker. I would hope that this is a trend that is moving in the correct direction. Yeah. I certainly there are some things that are getting better. Yeah. And and I feel like to me it's important to you know for a lot of those things like the things you mentioned like gay marriage I

153:32think it's important to realize that like a lot of those a lot of that progress would not have happened without the ability to break the law honestly you know like right that like how would how would anyone have known that like we wanted to allow samesex marriage if no one had been able to have a samesex relationship because Saudi laws had been perfect perfectly enforced. you know, how would we know that we want to legalize marijuana if like no one had ever been able to consume marijuana? Yeah. Right. Uh and so I think, you know, a lot of a lot of the fear around like increased surveillance, surveillance state or whatever is that like these that those those that space dissipates, you know. Yes. Yeah. But, you know, on the other hand, you know, it's like we're living in the apocalypse. You know, that it's like if you took someone from 200 years ago who

154:15used to be able to just walk up to the Clamoth River and dump a bucket in the water and pull out, you know, 12 salmon and that was, you know, their food. And you were like, "Oh, yeah. The way it works today is you go to Whole Foods and it's $20 a pound and it's, you know, pretty good." You know, they'd be like, "What have you done? Oh my god." You used to be able to walk across the backs of the salmon, you know, across the whole river. Well, we're trying to avoid slipping even further into that apocalypse. I don't know if you've uh follow what's going on in the Bristol Bay of Alaska with the Pebble Mine. No. Oh, it's crazy. They're trying to they're trying and well, you know, according to what Joe Biden said when he was running for office that when he's in office that will not happen. But um they're trying to do essentially the biggest mine in the world

155:04that would destroy the salmon population. It would destroy it. It would it would literally wipe out a gigantic not just a gigantic industry, but a gigantic chunk of the salmon. I think it's [sighs] I forget which kind of salmon it is. Um I don't want I say it's chinook. I I forget what kind of salmon it is, but it's the biggest population. Sakai, thank you. The biggest uh population of them in certainly in America, but I think in the world. I think it's responsible for an enormous number of jobs and enormous and apparently there's [ __ ] billions of dollars worth of gold and copper down there. Yeah. Earthworks, what's at stake? an average of 40 to 50 million wild salmon make the epic migration from the ocean to the headarters of the Bristol Bay every year like no place on earth the Bristol Bay wershed they've been working

156:00to try to make this mine a reality for I think a couple of decades now and uh people have been fighting tirelessly to educate people on what a devastating impact this is going to have on the ecology of that area and the fact that the environment will be permanently devastated that there's no way of bringing this back and that there's no way of doing this without destroying the environment. Because the the specific style of mining that they have to employ in order to pull that copper and gold out of the ground involves going deep into the earth to find these reservoirs of gold and copper and there's sulfur they have to go through and then they have to remove the waste and mining companies have invested hundreds [snorts] of millions of dollars in this and then b abandoned it. Yeah. Yeah. So, they were like, "We can't. This is

156:43we can't [ __ ] do this." And then people are like, "We can do it." And then they've got and it's other companies that are I don't believe the company that's currently involved in is even an American company. I think it's a it's a foreign company that's trying to I think they're from Canada that are trying to do this uh spectacular maybe can I don't know which company it is, but it's u my friend Steve Ranella from uh the Meat Eater podcast. I want to recommend this this podcast because he's got a particular episode on that um where he he talks about it. Let me find it real quick because it's um it's pretty epic where he talks to this one guy who's dedicated uh the last 20 years of his life trying to fight this. Um, let me just find it real quick because it's um it's really it's it's pretty intense and it's it's terrifying when you you see

157:34how close it's come to actually being implemented and how if it happens there's no way you pull that back like once they do it. Yeah. It's like all the all that uh Standing Rock [ __ ] you know, they were like, "No, this the the pipeline's going to be fine. No way that it leaks into the water or whatever." You know, it's like sure enough. Exactly. Unfortunately, I'm already listened to it, so I'm having a hard time finding it in this app. [ __ ] get it. Did you find it? They have a bunch of articles about here. Previously played um Yeah. A Halflife of Never. It's the October 5th episode. That's a good title. Yeah. And the the the gentleman's name is Tim Bristol, which is kind of crazy. Just that is his his birth name. His name is Tim Bristol and he's dealing with this Bristol Bay Yeah. situation. I mean, it's just a a random coincidence. Um,

158:26yeah. I mean, and you read all that [ __ ] about the episode 241, like when they were building the all the dams. Yeah. You know, in California, and it's just like the salmon just bashed themselves to death. Basically, they had to set them on fire. So many of them. Yeah. Same thing that happened up in Seattle. These knuckleheads, they didn't understand the migration. These salmon won't go anywhere else. They have one specific river where they were born and that's where they will die and spawn. It's crazy. But these [ __ ] that just want copper and gold are willing to do this. And there was this one politician in particular that has a gigantic windfall if he can pull this off. Um or lobbyist or whatever the [ __ ] he is, but he he stands to make I think they said $14 million if he can actually get get

159:10the shovels into the ground. That's uh how much he uh he earns. So what are we going to do about it? Kill that guy. [laughter] Assassination politics. Yes. Kill them all. No, I'm kidding. Don't Don't uh get me in trouble. You can get banned off of YouTube for saying something like that. I'm joking. Um what we should do we do? We should make people aware of it and make people aware that this is there real consequences to uh allowing politicians to make decisions that will literally affect human beings for the rest of eternity because you will never have that population of salmon coming to that particular location that have been going there for millions and millions of years. And the reason why you won't have them there is because someone is greedy. It's really that simple. I mean you we are getting along fine without that copper without that gold and we are

160:00using the the resource of the salmon and people are employed that are enjoying that resource and they're also able to go there and see the the bears eating the salmon and seeing this incredible wild place. Alaska is one of the few really truly wild spots in this country. Yeah. And someone might [ __ ] that up. And if you get the enough greedy [ __ ] together and they can figure out a way to make this a reality and with the wrong people in positions of power, that's 100% possible. Yeah. Yeah. You might even say we've organized the entire world economy to [ __ ] that up. Yeah. Like Yeah. But I, you know, I think that it's like the the question of agency of like, you know, what is how do we affect these processes is like tough, you know? Well, just I mean I was joking obviously about killing that person, but there was a recent um

160:55um one of the Iranian scientists was assassinated and this brought up this gigantic ethical debate and and we don't know who did it whether it was a Israeli army MSAD held a press conference to say we didn't do it while wearing t-shirts that said we definitely did it. Assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists shot with remotecont controlled machine gun. Holy [ __ ] inid daylight, which is what I was hearing about. Oh my god, dude. We're killing people with robots now, right? That was the other that um the other Iranian guy that got killed. Uh Sollemani, who was also killed with a drone. I mean, essentially, yeah, this is out of another car, but whatever. Oh, so a car was driving by and there was a remote control machine gun. [ __ ] says it was a He was in a bulletproof car, too. Wow. I don't know. He was in a bulletproof. Like, they knew

161:50they were going to kill this guy. You do, man. Damn. So, this is the question. Oh, he got out of the car. Oh, [ __ ] up. Well, there you go. You [ __ ] up. Stay in that bulletproof car. If you uh if you know that a man is going to like What if someone did that to Oenheimer? You know what? If someone said, "Hey, uh, we see where this is going and, uh, we need to find that Oenheimer gentleman and we need to prevent big boy from, uh, you know, dropping [clears throat] down and and killing how many people?" Like, yeah, half a million people. What? He got shot by that remote. It was 164 yards away. Shot him and his bodyguard and then the car they were in exploded. Lasted for three minute. Like the whole thing was three minutes long. Wow. So, there's this ethical dilemma like if someone is actively trying to acquire

162:42nuclear weapons and we think that those people are going to use those nuclear weapons, is it ethical to kill that person and is that person's a scientist, they're not a Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think the causality stuff is really hard to figure out, you know. Um, but I think most of the time it's not about the the one person, you know, that it's not, you know, maybe sometimes it is, but I think most it's just like I feel like assassination politics in the tech arena does not work, you know, that it's like you can get rid of all the people at the top of these companies and that's not what's going to do it, you know, that they're like these structural reasons why these things keep happening over and over again. Yeah. I think they're trying to slow it down though, right? Like this is the reason why do you remember when they employed uh suckset? stucks

163:27you know I mean that was uh for the same reason right they were trying to uh disarm the Iranian nuclear capabilities yeah that was the same thing where they but that was like we didn't do it while wearing t-shirts they were like we definitely did this [laughter] but they did that with uh computer virus right which is pretty fascinating and people didn't have a problem with that they're like well that's well I think people did some people had a problem with that obviously but well Iranians yeah but also just like okay uh you know you go down that road and yeah and you know where things can happen to you know I I a great example is um so one of the things that came out uh in a lot of the documents that Snowden released was um that the NSA had worked with uh a standards body called NIST in order to produce uh a random number generator that was um backdoored.

164:22So random numbers are very important in cryptography and if you can predict what the random numbers are going to be then you win. Uh and so uh the NSA had produced this random number generator that allowed them to predict uh what the random numbers would be because they knew of uh this one constant that was was in there. They knew they knew a reciprocal value that you can't derive just by looking at it. But they they know because they created it. And uh they they had what they called uh a nobody but us back door. no bus, nobody but us, back door. Uh, and they got NIST to standardize this thing and then they they uh got a a company called uh Jupiter who makes routers and VPNs and stuff like that, Juniper, sorry, uh to uh include this in their products. Uh and so the idea was that like the NSA would have these capabilities. they had developed, you know, these

165:11vulnerabilities that they could exploit in situations like this, you know, that they could like take advantage of uh foreign powers and stuff like that um in ways that wouldn't boomerang back at them. Uh but what happened was uh in I think you know 20 early early teens uh Juniper got hacked and somebody secretly changed that one parameter uh that was like basically the back door to a different one that they knew knew the the reciprocal value to uh and it's most likely China or Russia that did this. Uh and uh then what's kind of interesting is there's the a big uh incident where the uh OPM the office of personnel management I think was compromised and they have records on you know foreign intelligence assets and stuff like that. Um that uh their systems were compromised it seems like maybe by China and what's sort of interesting is that

166:08they were running the Juniper uh networking gear that had been uh you know hacked in this one specific way. And so it's kind of possible that like, you know, the NSA developed this back door that they were going to use for situations like this, you know, against foreign adversaries or whatever, and that the whole thing just boomeranged back at them and uh the office OPM was compromised as as a result. Wow. But and this is like um I don't know. I think it's you know it's it's easy to look at things like suckset and stuff like that and just be like yeah this is harm reduction or whatever you know but um like in the end it can have real world consequences and this is also why people are so hesitant about you know like the government is always like well why don't you develop a form of cryptography where it like works except for us you know we

166:54can access [laughter] the content you know uh and it's like well this is why because uh if you can if you can access if anybody can access it like somehow that's going to boom boomerang back at you. Well, I remember when there was uh a terrorist attack in Bakersfield, California. Is that where it was? I think it was Bakersfield. Yeah. Where uh Yeah. Uh San Bernardino. San Bernardino. Thank you. Yeah. And there was uh an iPhone involved and Apple wouldn't open it for them. Yeah. It wouldn't allow the FBI to have access to it and people were furious and they were like, "If this this starts here, this does not end well." Yeah. And I kind of saw their point, but I kind of saw the FBI's point, too. Like, you just open this one. This guy's clearly a murderer's killed a ton of people and created this terrorist uh incident. Yeah. But, I mean, it was it was a

167:43little disingenuous, too, right? Where it's like the FB like the FBI had their entire iCloud backup for this device. Like, the only thing they didn't have was like the previous two hours or something like that. And the reason they didn't have it is because they [ __ ] up and like uh approached it in the wrong way and got themselves locked out of it. Oh, really? And so it's like they had it was their own mistake that led to the situation where they didn't have the iCloud backup. So then it's like what are you really going to get off this phone? You know, it's like the the actual possibility of what was there was like extremely marginal. So do you think what they really want is the tools to be able to get into other phones, you know, where they've just been waiting, you know, for like the moment of like, okay, here we go. We got

168:22terrorists. we got, you know, like Yeah, that makes sense. Um, what did you think like when the State Department or whoever it was banned Huawei phones? Yeah. Did you think there was I mean, yeah, it's mostly political, right? Like it's uh I It's complicated, right? Because there's like, you know, companies like Huawei and um you know uh what the Tens uh the people who make Tik Tok. Uh okay. you know, like they're Yeah, they're doing like all the sketchy [ __ ] Um, but it's the same sketchy [ __ ] that like all of Silicon Valley is doing, you know, like it's not um Is it really? Are there is that a valid comparison to what they're doing in Silicon Valley? Like Huawei did have routers that had third party access apparently and they were shown that information was going to a third party that was not supposed to be right.

169:17Wasn't that part of the issue? I I think am I reading this wrong? Uh well okay I think there's like a couple um there there have been incidents where it's like yeah there's like data collection that's happening. Yeah. Well there's data collection happening like in all western products too you know uh like I mean and actually the the way the western products designed are designed are really scary. I mean, uh, in the telecommunications space, um, there's, uh, a legal requirement called Kalia, Communications and Law Enforcement Act or something like that that requires telecommunications equipment to have, um, to have eavesdropping like surveillance stuff built into it. Like when you produce the hardware in order to sell it in the United States, you have to have like which hardware as well? Like phone switches and stuff, you know,

169:58it's like when you make a normal phone call, it has to have uh I forget what they call like uh the ability to tap. Yeah, they they call it something else, but it has to have, you know, this ability to um uh record conversations, intercept uh lawful intercept. That's what is a how does a signal call work? So, signal calls work uh not using the traditional telecommunications infrastructure. It uh is routing data over the internet. Uh and that data is end encrypted. So, nobody can ease drop on those calls including us. Uh and but so communication equipment that is produced in the United States has to have uh this lawful intercept so-called lawful intercept capability. But what's crazy about that is that's the same, you know, it's like these are US companies and they're selling that all around the world. So that's the [ __ ]

170:44that gets shipped to UAE and you know, so it's like it's the secondary effect thing of like the United States government was like, well, we're going to be responsible with this or whatever. We're going to have warrants or whatever. And even that's not true. And then that same equipment gets shipped to tyrants and you know repressive regimes all over the place and they've just got a readym made thing, [laughter] you know, to just avail everyone's phone calls. Uh so it's like I don't know. Uh it's it's hard to indict Huawei for acting substantially different than the way than you know whatever the the US industry acts. It's just certainly they have a different political environment and you know um they are much more willing to use that information uh to do really brutal stuff. Well, it wasn't just that they banned Huawei devices, but they also banned

171:31them from using Google. That's when I thought like wow this is really like what do they know or what has been Google didn't allow? Yeah. Well, Google has um no so you know Android you're talking about like so soal they have they can't use the Android operating system anymore they have to now they've developed their own operating system and now they have their own ecosystem they have their own app store the whole deal yeah but that's that's also um that's a business thing you know where it's like Google's control over you know Google is producing this software Android and they're it's just free you know they're um releasing But they want to maintain some control over the ecosystem because it's their thing that they're producing. Uh and so they have a lot of requirements about it's like oh you know it's like okay you can run Android oh you want all this

172:19other stuff that we make that's not part of just like the stock free thing you know like play services and you know all the Google stuff and increasingly more and more of Android is just getting shoved into this proprietary bit you know and they're like okay you want access to this then it's going to cost you in these ways you know and I think it probably it got to the point where Huawei was just like um we're not willing to pay, you know, even e either monetarily or through whatever compromise they would have to make and they were just like we're going to do our own thing. I thought it was because of the state department's Oh, it it could have also been that there was a legal requirement that they stopped doing that. Yeah. Yeah. I think I might be Jamie will find out. I think I think I might be right, but I'm not sure though. But it it just

173:05made me think like I I understand that there's a sort of a connection that can't be broken between business and government in China and that business and government are united. It's not like Sure. You know, like Apple and the FBI, right, where in China they would just give them Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah. They developed the Yeah. They would help. Yeah. They would they would have the tools to get into it. They wouldn't have to have this conversation. Yeah. Exactly. They just send it to the directly to the people. we're terrified of is that these relationships that business and government have in this country, they're getting tighter and tighter intertwined. And we look at a country like China that does have this sort of inexraable connection between business and government and we're terrified that we're going to be like that someday. Yep.

173:54Yeah. Just it it is what it is. Yeah. I mean I and that's I think you know a lot of what Snowden was revealing was like you know that there are already these relationships you know um you know the NSA called it prism and uh you know tech companies just called it like the consoles or whatever that they had built for these you know uh for these requests but it's um that's yeah it's happening and I don't also you know it's it's sort of like I think a lot of people a lot of nations look at China and are envious right where it's M they've done this thing where they just um you know they built like the great firewall of China and that has served them in a lot of ways you know one surveillance obviously like they have total control of everything that appears on the internet uh so not just surveillance but also content moderation uh propaganda but then also uh like it

174:50allows them to have their own internet economy you know where like China is large enough that um they can have their own ecosystem where like you know Google people don't use Google there you know people don't use uh they they have their own chat apps they have their own search engines they have their own social networks they have their own everything and I think a lot of nations like look at China and they're just like huh that was kind of smart you know it's like you have your own ecosystem your own infrastructure that you control and you have like the ability to do content moderation and you have the ability to do surveillance and so I think the fear is that there's going to be like a bulcanization of the internet where you know Russia will be next and then every country that has an economy large enough uh will go down the same road. Was it Jamie?

175:31Uh there was a it seemed like there's a couple things that happened that are what you're saying, but directly seems to be sweeping crackdown on facial recognition tech. House and Senate Democrats on Tuesday rolled out a legislation to halt federal use of facial recognition software and require state and local authorities to pause any use of the technology to receive federal funding. The facial recognition and biometric technology memorial memorial moratorum act introduced Thursday da da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d marks one of the most ambitious crackdowns on FA this has to do with that it said it was part of this boycott that had to do with Google's like uh antitrust suit that also had to do with Facebook and they were looking into it this is from like a month ago I mean I think this is this is connected

176:13to what you're saying just in the sense that like um you know the people who are producing that facial recognition technology. It's not the government, it's, you know, volunteer or whoever selling services to the government. And then, you know, the government is then deploying this technology that they're getting from industry and in kind of crazy ways. Like there's a story of the Black Lives Matter protester uh who was they like the police that like NYPD, you know, not like the FBI, you know, NYPD like tracked him to his house using facial recognition technology. Um, and so yeah, it's how did they do that? Uh there's a story about it in New York or something like there's I've been finding stories. No one knows what these things are. There's things supposedly all over New York City and Manhattan that are tracking everybody's face as soon as they go in

176:59there. And people I've watched news videos from local New York local media asking people, "Have you seen these? What are they?" They get no answers. Well, here's what's hilarious. Crime has never been higher. New [laughter] York City crime right now is insane. That shit's [snorts] not doing anything. Yeah. Well, everyone's wearing a mask, too. That's also part of the problem. But I think, you know, the fear is that like so there's this like, you know, circle of like industry producing technology that is going into government and like stuff like facial facial recognition technology just just makes existing power structures much more difficult to contest. Do you use facial recognition on your phone? Uh, no. I don't I don't have any apps or anything that use it. You don't with your iPhone? Oh, no. I just have a pen. Yeah. Oh, you don't use it? What's going on,

177:48Jimmy? New York City Police Department uses facial recognition software to track down a Black Lives Matter activist accused of assault after allegedly shouting into a police officer's ear with a bullhorn. That's it. [laughter] The mayor. What about that guy who punched Rick Morannis? You [ __ ] They found him. They did? Yeah. Like last week in jail. But they did find him. How' they find him? They have facial recognition jail. But he wear a mask. I don't know. Anyway, um listen, I think what you're doing is very important and I I love the fact that you approach things the way you do and that you you really are this idealistic person that's not trying to make money off of this stuff and you're you're doing it because you think it's the right thing to do. And if there is a resistance, people like you are very important. You know, like

178:37what you what you've done by creating signal, it's very important. There's not there's not a lot of other options and there's no other options that I think are as secure or as uh as viable. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. Um I appreciate you saying that. And uh I support it and I try to tell other people to use it as well. Um last word. You have anything to say to everybody before we wrap this up? [snorts] It's a lot of pressure. Sorry. [laughter and gasps] Um can I can I put out a public uh plea for a project I'm trying to work on? Sure. Okay. I'm vaguely obsessed with uh this thing that happened in the 60s. Um are are you familiar with uh the Soviet space dogs. So the first animal in space was a dog named Leica. Uh Leica died in space. Uh sadly, the second animal in space was a dog called Stroka. Uh Stroka went to space, made it back to Earth, and had puppies. Uh

179:37whoa, those puppies can read minds. When Kruev came to visit JFK in 1965, he brought with him the ultimate insult gift, which was one of the puppies. That's an insult. Oh, dude. It's like, oh, do you have anything that's been to space? We have extra puppies. You know, do you want one? You know, that's an insult, dude. It's the ultimate insult gift. Like the United States had no space program. Had never been. The Soviet Union was like way ahead of them. They're like, "Oh, we've just got extra animals that have been to space. Like, here, have one." You know, it's a puppy. Stop being so personal. That's what I would tell Kennedy. Just take the puppy. Kennedy took the puppy. Kennedy took the puppy. The puppy had a cold war [snorts] romance with one of Kennedy's dogs. And they had puppies. Oh snap. That the Kennedys called the Pupnicks. [laughter]

180:19And the Pupnicks uh captivated the imagination of children across America. Uh because uh Jackie Kennedy said something. She was like, "I don't know what we're going to do with the dogs." You know, and that ignited a spontaneous letterw writing campaign from children across America who all requested one of the puppies. Uh Jackie Kennedy selected two children in America whose names were Mark Bruce and Karen House. And she delivered two puppies to each of these people. Uh one of them lived in uh Missouri. The other lived in um Illinois. Uh and I have sort of been obsessed with the idea that those puppies had puppies and that those puppies had puppies and that somewhere in the American Midwest today are the descendants of the original animals in space. the first animal to go to space and survive. They probably been watered down so heavily maybe, but like

181:10Chihuahua and German shepherds and [ __ ] Well, they were all um they were there right there. They were MS. They were um random dogs that they found from around uh the like spaceport cuz they thought that they would be like tougher. Oh wow. Uh and but they were small. And uh so yeah, I've been obsessed with the idea that the the these dogs could still be out there and I've been trying to find the dogs. So I've been trying to track down these two people uh notably Karen House because she got the female dog and I think she's still alive and I think she lives in the Chicago area, but I can't get in touch with her because I'm not I don't know. I'm not an investigative journalist. I like don't know how to do this or whatever. So if anybody knows anything about the whereabouts of Karen House or the descendants of the Soviet space dogs,

181:55I'm very interested. My my goal is just to meet one, you know. How should someone get in touch with you? I'm on the internet. Okay, Moxy. Just like that. I'm on the internet. My name is Moxy. [laughter] I love it. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. I really enjoyed our