AS HEARD ON - The Jim Polito Show - WTAG 580 AM: James Bond, Hacking hubris and why it may have cost us the war against hacking, President Biden and Cyberwar saber rattling

Welcome!

Good morning, everybody. I was on WTAG this morning with Jim Polito.  We got into a couple of interesting topics, but we started off with the new James Bond movie and why they are re-shooting some of the scenes. We talked about our arrogance and why we may lose the war against hacking.  Then we discussed an infrastructure hack against a water plant here in the US. Then we talked about how President Biden has responded to the SolarWinds hack and why that response may create a huge problem.  Here we go with Jim.

For more tech tips, news, and updates, visit - CraigPeterson.com.

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] All of those tools went online. Now all of a sudden, we're getting hacked by our own tools that were developed by us to hack them.  They're them in this are getting smarter and smarter.

Good morning, everybody on with Mr. Polito this morning, we talked a little bit about movies and the new Daniel Craig, James Bond that might come out sometime within the next five years.

But we also went into this really interesting article over in the New York Times. It's titled how the United States lost to hackers. We get into that, and what can you do? What should you be doing in order to help prevent them from getting you as well? So here we go with Mr. Polito.

Jim Polito: [00:00:46] Welcome back. Here he is. It's just one of our most popular guests. He is the Tech-Talk guru, and he's just a wealth of information. For our new listeners in Rhode Island, Craig Peterson actually wrote code for the internet that is still in use today. Unlike Al Gore, he has proof that he invented the internet. Joining us now the Superman of the internet because he's also fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.

Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:22] Morning, did you notice you must-have? They removed and the American way from his last movie so that it would play well in China.

Jim Polito: [00:01:30] Come on, doc, Craig, please. I know you listened to the show, please. Don't get me started on China again.

I just want to talk right now. They do all of that, Disney, all of them, and they all, except for Fox, every major news organization in this country, has an affiliation with an entertainment organization that wants to sell products in China. Yes,

Craig Peterson: [00:01:57] Look at the newest Mulan. Not only filmed in China, but went through Chinese editors, and they had to change things in it.

Oh, Bond, the new Bond movie. Did you hear about this one?  First of all, I'm so excited about it. I didn't think I'd like Daniel Craig, but I ended up liking Daniel Craig. They are reshooting parts of that movie right now.

Jim Polito: [00:02:17] What? Because it's so, they can sell it in China because it's offending the Chinese censors.

Craig Peterson: [00:02:22] You got one word, right? Sell. Do you know product placement is how these movie guys make a lot of their money?  They shot this thing. What now? Two years, three years ago. And the problem they found is the sponsors were all upset because they delayed it again. It was going to come up like May, and now it's going to come out in the fall. So they are reshooting scenes for product placement for the newest versions of the products because the ones that are in the movie are like old hat now.

Jim Polito: [00:02:55] Yeah, look, here's the thing. I thought Sean Connery was the best, and I still think he is the best, but Daniel Craig is close. From the very beginning, this is one of my few luxury indulgences. I have a Rolex watch. It is the Oh God, and I can't even think of the this is COVID brain. It's the, no, not a submariner. Thank you, Danny. It's the submariner black-faced one.  Oh, I do have it. The black-faced submariner. That is the one that Sean Connery wore cause I always loved that watch.

I've had it for over 20 years. Anyway, they switched to Omega, remember. You know Rolex didn't need the sponsorship. Omega said we want to be the official watch of James Bond. There you go, Omega is now the watch.

When people see a movie, did you ever notice when somebody takes a drink? That the label is perfectly pointed toward the camera. Like all that stuff, bologna. Listen, I make my money off of advertising, too, so I can't complain.

I can't believe they're doing all that for product placement. So you have the latest version of the product.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:04] Yeah. It's not like you're listening to Jim Polito and Jim says, Hey, listen, I have these guys out and do this for me, and I love this product, and then you run advertisements versus let's have a cold one and the out come's the latest famous beer or something anyways.

Jim Polito: [00:04:21] Yeah. Suppose James Bond is drinking spiked seltzer. It's over for me with Bond. If he's drinking, if they're reshooting this so that he can, I have a bud light spiked lemonade. It's done. It is over.

It's shaken, not stirred. Hey, while I got you. Tech Talk guru and see, as I said, folks, Craig Peterson is a plethora of this kind of information.

Talk to me about we are really losing the hacking war? You sent me some material. As I read through it, it made me nervous because the stuff that you sent me is implying that we're losing the hacking war. I don't want to hear that's like losing the space race. That's like losing the nuclear weapons race or like having a missile gap, as John F. Kennedy said.  Is that true?

Craig Peterson: [00:05:14] Yeah, it is actually. Now that November 6th as the path of the New York times is coming out and talking about this, in a different way. But what they're saying, and this is just, I love this article by Nicole peroxide and what she's talking about is how we as a nation now, and particularly as a government, really have too much hubris over cyber warfare. That's what it really is. We've talked before about how we are already in world war three.  It is a cyberwar where they're sending things out.

Just this last week, we had a water plant here in the United States. It was taken control of by a remote hacker. Now you think about water purification plants, and there's nasty stuff in there. For instance, in this case, basically lye, right? Think of lye and how nasty that is, but all of the chemicals compounds are involved. Yeah.

The hackers got in and dramatically increased the amount of lye going into the water supply in that water plant that fed the whole town.

Now the good news here is that somebody noticed, how come we're using so much lye? They shut it down almost immediately, which is really good. Enemies are out there.  You mentioned China already. And, of course, we've got North Korea involved. Vietnam's now involved. Russia is involved, but they want to be able to control the US to hold us hostage, just much the same way. Ransomware is holding businesses hostage.

We've been so busy over the years, hacking them that we haven't paid enough attention in the US to protecting ourselves.

In this article, she goes into a discussion she had with a former NSA contractor, many of these guys and gals like the blackwaters' of the world. These third-party companies will do hacking on behalf of the government. She was talking to some of these people and what they were doing.

We only recently found out about the hacking of the American citizens that was going on when all of these tools that the national security agency was using to hack foreign powers and apparently hack us to, and at least in some cases, all of those tools went online. Now all of a sudden, we're getting hacked by our own tools that were developed by us to hack them.

The them in this are getting smarter, and we're just sitting there. That's why I am  so adamant that people get on my email list because we're doing training. I've got brand new emails we're putting together now. It's literally a year-long series where every week you get a little bit of training on different parts of this because our businesses are not taking this seriously.

That's the hubris. Our government's not taking this seriously. The Solarwinds attack that happened. We already, as US taxpayers, funded the development of a system, millions of dollars that would have stopped this problem, and it wasn't in use. Okay.

We're not taking it seriously on any level. The same thing's true with us as individuals. Now I understand individuals, right? This stuff is confusing. What should I get? What should I buy? We've had discussions about what kind of firewalls should you have? Don't use these paid VPN's.

I've done all kinds of free training on that for people, but we're not. Taking it seriously. And I'm looking at what the Biden administration is doing and planning on doing right now. I don't think any of it's going to make it any better. And yes, right now, we have pretty much lost this battle in this war, but I think we can pull up our socks as time goes forward.

But again, there's just no real incentive.

Jim Polito: [00:09:29] I was glad to hear you end on that note because already I had crawled under the table while you were going on. I kept my headphones on so I could still hear.

So is there any difference now, or is it too early to tell in the way that the previous administration under Trump and now the current administration under Biden is dealing with this?

Craig Peterson: [00:09:52] It's still a little bit too early. There's been a ton of saber-rattling by our President. Who's been out there saying we got hacked, the Solarwinds hack. We're gonna attack back. This is basically asymmetric warfare. This is not something where you can easily identify who it was and then drop a missile down their chimney as we did with Kadafi. This is much more complicated, much more difficult.

I'm afraid having a President like Joe Biden when he's saying we're going to attack back. We're going to retaliate, I think were his actual words. It really worries me because that's the sort of thing that could get us into a full-scale cyberwar and maybe even a hot war.

Jim Polito: [00:10:38] Oh boy. I think we're going to wrap it up right about there.

Craig, it was much better when we were talking about the upcoming Bond movie, which I, too, like you, am looking forward to.  I'm a big Daniel Craig fan. I think he does a great job with Bond.

Craig, you were talking earlier about why it's so important, and folks should get on board with you.

How do folks get on board with you?

Craig Peterson: [00:11:02] Yeah, absolutely. I am not a big marketer at all. In fact, that's probably one of my biggest failings. I've done work, as we've mentioned for NASA, the FBI, you name it in pretty much every Fortune 100 companies, right?

But it's the individuals that are having problems at the small office, home office, the small businesses. Those are whom I'm helping.

Make sure you go right now to Craig peterson.com/subscribe because we're probably starting this next week. I'm thinking more training. More stuff.  Just some simple stuff that you can do in a matter of a few minutes. The only way you'll be able to get that is if I had the email and you got to sign up, Craig peterson.com/subscribe.

Jim Polito: [00:11:47] All right, Craig is usual. Excellent work. Always a pleasure. And we'll catch up with you next week.

Craig Peterson: [00:11:54] Hey, thanks. Take care, Jim.

Jim Polito: [00:11:55] You too, Craig Peterson, great guy, and  if you want to hear that again, we likely will podcast it, and you can get to that podcast on the website of the station. You're listening to now just go to the Jim Polito show. A final word, actually, a web poll and a final word when we return. You're listening to the Jim Polito show your safe space.

The Jim Polito show feels free to laugh, cry, or simply enjoy by screaming out. We don't want to tell you how to do it.

Craig Peterson: [00:12:22] I had to play that last part because what are you kidding me? Anyhow. Thanks for being with me today. I am dead serious. We are doing a whole bunch of training. That's going to be really phenomenal. I think. I think for pretty much everybody, it covers a bunch of different things, but I assume since you're on my podcast, you're already on my email list.

If you're not, you now know how to get on.

Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.

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