Podcasts about Great Firewall

In this episode of Breaking Badness, we dive into two major cybersecurity stories: the exploitation of a VPN vulnerability by Chinese APT 41 and the newly discovered “Wall Bleed” flaw in the Great Firewall of China. APT 41 has been using a critical VPN vulnerability to infiltrate operational technology (OT) organizations, targeting industries like aerospace and defense. Meanwhile, researchers have uncovered a flaw in China's DNS injection system, which inadvertently leaks internal data—an ironic twist for a government known for its strict internet censorship. Join us as we break down these exploits, their impact on cybersecurity, and what they reveal about modern cyber espionage. We also discuss best practices for securing VPNs, firewall vulnerabilities, and the ethical implications of studying censorship technologies.

More Info on the Show: https://rhr.tv- IMF Board Approves $1.4Bn Loan to El Salvador with Further Bitcoin Restrictions https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/imf-board-approves-1-4b-loan-to-el-salvador-2/- European States Continue Their Race for Encryption Backdoors https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/european-states-continue-race-for-encryption-backdoors/- Apple Pulls E2EE iCloud Encryption in UK, Boots 135K+ 'Non-Compliant' Apps from EU App Store https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/apple-pulls-e2e-icloud-encryption-in-uk-boots-135k-non-compliant-apps-from-eu-app-store/- Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-promise-to-never-sell-personal-data-asks-users-not-to-panic/- Google | Facilitating Censorship in Russia and ChinaGoogle is actively assisting authoritarian regimes like China and Russia to censor dissent, removing online content critical of the Kremlin and Chinese Communist Party. In Russia, Google complied with government requests to erase YouTube videos opposing the war in Ukraine, while in China, it removed references to the Tiananmen Square massacre and pro-democracy activism. With more than 70% of Russians relying on YouTube for news and China's Great Firewall blocking independent sources, corporate compliance with state censorship enables state propaganda to proliferate as a dominant narrative. For activists and nonprofits seeking uncensorable communications, nostr — an open and decentralized protocol — offers a way to share information beyond the reach of authoritarian regimes. Activists and NGOs can get started here.- Sparrow Wallet v2.1.3: OneKey Support, Expanded Labels Export, Lark Fixes https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/sparrow-wallet-v2-1-3/- TollGate Cashu Enabled Wifi https://tollgate.me- Bitkey launches inheritance feature https://bitkey.build/inheritance-is-live-heres-how-it-works/- Braiins builds their own ASIC https://primal.net/e/nevent1qvzqqqqqqyqzq7yxw3qsg0tk7q6prqjreqyx0ynzl4x9rtu58x7tnxe4ml4hk3433zflnx- Cove iOS Beta Released https://primal.net/e/nevent1qvzqqqqqqyqzq0ec9ufl7xx0fsede5kh5s6003n5czftz2wd0tlnan4udzravsard2yvgk- Nunchuk Launches New and Improved Group Wallet https://primal.net/e/nevent1qvzqqqqqqyqzqak65lj2e7vgfw50dvkmdt4zjka68cq72ml5fwn28zklsekckep7vhayca- Marty's hathttps://finitesupply.co/0:00 - Intro2:59 - Not a dump8:13 - Jack is not Satoshi12:21 - Dashboard & Pubkey18:40 - IMF El Salvador loan22:25 - Euro encryption backdoors33:29 - Firefox removes privacy promise38:19 - HRF Story of the Week39:57 - Software updates52:09 - Boosts54:18 - More software updates1:04:24 - Lazarus group1:11:58 - Closing riffShoutout to our sponsors:Unchainedhttps://unchained.com/rhr/Bitkeyhttps://bitkey.world/Stakworkhttps://stakwork.ai/Coinkitehttps://coinkite.com/TFTC Merch is Available:Shop Nowhttps://merch.tftc.io/Join the TFTC Movement:Main YT Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videosClips YT Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQWebsitehttps://tftc.io/Twitterhttps://twitter.com/tftc21Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/Follow Marty Bent:Twitterhttps://twitter.com/martybentNewsletterhttps://tftc.io/martys-bent/Podcasthttps://tftc.io/podcasts/Follow Odell:Nostrhttps://primal.net/odellNewsletterhttps://discreetlog.com/Podcasthttps://citadeldispatch.com/

China's internet is famously walled off from the global web. Despite barriers including censorship and moderation practices, a unique Chinese digital ecosystem has flourished—and unexpectedly, attracted Americans.  The recent temporary exodus of TikTok users to RedNote presented a rare opportunity for American and Chinese peoples to digitally interact on a large scale, sharing views and opinions on the Chinese internet's own turf. Why is China's internet so different from the global internet and in what ways can it be a bridge, or barrier, for online exchange? Yaling Jiang joins the National Committee in an interview recorded on February 9, 2025 to introduce China's internet, its evolution, and forms of censorship that exist within it. Learn more about the speaker.

Tim Rühlig ist Experte für Chinas Außen-, Wirtschafts- und Technologiepolitik und arbeitet und forscht am European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS).Ein Gespräch über die Pluralisierung der chinesischen Gesellschaft und Fraktionen innerhalb der kommunistischen Partei, über die Rivalität mit “dem Westen”, über die Great Firewall und die Verbindung von Freiheit und Kreativität, über DeepSeek, TikTok, Taiwan und Trump und wie Europa China sieht, wie China Europa sieht und warum ein Interesse an der Infragestellung der Demokratie besteht. Infos & Links zur Folge⁠⁠Homepage von Tim RühligFolge 145 mit Tim Rühlig über Chinas Außenpolitikbei Apple Podcasts | ⁠⁠bei SpotifyInfos & Links zum Podcast⁠⁠

La récente décision de Meta de suspendre partiellement le fact-checking suscite une forte réaction en Europe. Cette décision illustre un problème plus large : comment vivre dans un espace numérique global où chaque pays impose ses propres règles ?La décision de Meta - maison-mère de Facebook, Instagram et Threads - est perçue en Europe comme une capitulation face à la désinformation. Le problème est que les réglementations concernant l'information en ligne divergent considérablement entre les États-Unis et l'Union Européenne. Du coup, les critiques s'intensifient, illustrant les tensions entre une approche mondiale et des législations nationales spécifiques. D'autres exemples illustrent la censure en Chine, via le Great Firewall, ou encore l'exploitation des réseaux sociaux par le régime taliban en Afghanistan. Les plateformes numériques sont soumises à des injonctions contradictoires. Les géants technologiques doivent s'adapter à des lois nationales souvent contradictoires, révélant un Internet mondialisé complexe, fait de régulations éclatées.Quelles solutions ? L'idée d'une gouvernance hybride, mêlant normes locales et globales apparait comme une solution enviable mais peu réaliste, face aux divergences culturelles et éthiques mondiales. Ainsi, la décision de Meta met en exergue les limites d'un Internet unifié, brandissant le spectre d'un internet fragmenté et cloisonné, un "Splinternet", où la quête d'un équilibre entre liberté d'expression et réglementation demeure un défi majeur.-----------

Dom Knight is joined by Chaser editor John Delmenico to unpack everything we know about the Federal Government's under 16's social media ban. Unfortunately, "everything we know" gets exhausted pretty quickly, as it turns out there's a lot more being left to chance. BUY A COPY OF THE CHASER ANNUAL HERE You can lose the ads and get more content! Become a Chaser Report VIP member at http://apple.co/thechaser OR https://plus.acast.com/s/the-chaser-report. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 92: In this episode of Critical Thinking - Bug Bounty Podcast In this episode Justin and Joel tackle a host of new research and write-ups, including Ruby SAML, 0-Click exploits in MediaTek Wi-Fi, and Vulnerabilities caused by The Great FirewallFollow us on twitter at: @ctbbpodcastWe're new to this podcasting thing, so feel free to send us any feedback here: info@criticalthinkingpodcast.ioShoutout to YTCracker for the awesome intro music!------ Links ------Find the Hackernotes: https://blog.criticalthinkingpodcast.io/Follow your hosts Rhynorater & Teknogeek on twitter:https://twitter.com/0xteknogeekhttps://twitter.com/rhynorater------ Ways to Support CTBBPodcast ------Hop on the CTBB Discord at https://ctbb.show/discord!We also do Discord subs at $25, $10, and $5 - premium subscribers get access to private masterclasses, exploits, tools, scripts, un-redacted bug reports, etc.Today's Sponsor - ThreatLocker. Checkout their ThreatLocker Detect! https://www.criticalthinkingpodcast.io/tl-detectResources:Insecurity through CensorshipRuby-SAML / GitLab Authentication Bypass0-Click exploit discovered in MediaTek Wi-Fi chipsetsNew Caido Plugin to Generate WordlistsBebik's 403 BypassorCSPBypassArb Read & Arb write on LLaMa.cpp by SideQuestXSS WAF Bypass One payload for allTimestamps(00:00:00) Introduction(00:02:08) Vulnerabilities Caused by The Great Firewall(00:07:25) Ruby SAML Bypass(00:19:55) 0-Click exploit discovered in MediaTek Wi-Fi chipsets(00:24:36) New Caido Wordlist Plugin(00:31:00) CSPBypass.com(00:35:37) Arb Read & Arb write on LLaMa.cpp by SideQuest(00:43:10) Helpful WAF Bypass

** On October 19, Cindy Yu and a panel of special guests will be recording a live Chinese Whispers at London's Battle of Ideas festival, talking the latest on China's economic slowdown and asking – what are the social and political implications? Is China in decline? Chinese Whispers listeners can get a 20 per cent discount on the ticket price with the code WHISPERS24. Click here to find out more and get your ticket. ** The release of ChatGPT in late 2022 brought home the sheer potential of artificial intelligence and the speed with which developments are being made. It made AI the hot topic from business to politics and, yes, journalism.  This was true in China too, despite the fact that ChatGPT has never been allowed to be used within Chinese borders. Instead, China has a rich landscape of homegrown AI products, where progress is being led by tech giants like search engine Baidu and TikTok's owner, ByteDance. So already we are seeing a bifurcation in the AI worlds of China and the West – just like with social media and e-commerce. This episode will peek over the Great Firewall to update listeners on China's progress on AI. The country is fast becoming an AI superpower even as it limits the freedoms its generative models can have and keeps out some of the world's leading companies. Could this be the next arms race? I'm joined by the researcher Matt Sheehan, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a long time watcher of China's tech scene.

** On October 19, Cindy Yu and a panel of special guests will be recording a live Chinese Whispers at London's Battle of Ideas festival, talking the latest on China's economic slowdown and asking – what are the social and political implications? Is China in decline? Chinese Whispers listeners can get a 20 per cent discount on the ticket price with the code WHISPERS24. Click here to find out more and get your ticket. ** The release of ChatGPT in late 2022 brought home the sheer potential of artificial intelligence and the speed with which developments are being made. It made AI the hot topic from business to politics and, yes, journalism.  This was true in China too, despite the fact that ChatGPT has never been allowed to be used within Chinese borders. Instead, China has a rich landscape of homegrown AI products, where progress is being led by tech giants like search engine Baidu and TikTok's owner, ByteDance. So already we are seeing a bifurcation in the AI worlds of China and the West – just like with social media and e-commerce. This episode will peek over the Great Firewall to update listeners on China's progress on AI. The country is fast becoming an AI superpower even as it limits the freedoms its generative models can have and keeps out some of the world's leading companies. Could this be the next arms race? Cindy Yu is joined by the researcher Matt Sheehan, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a long time watcher of China's tech scene.

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect freedom of expression. For centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. The new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-totalimmunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way. In Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media's Content Regulation and Moderation Practices (Springer, 2023), particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. The state's solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of social media's content regulation and moderation practices. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of freedom of expression and the internet, showing that, with different kinds of censorship, this essentially free form of communication has come – almost by default – under legal regulation and the original freedom may have been lost in too many countries in recent years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect freedom of expression. For centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. The new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-totalimmunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way. In Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media's Content Regulation and Moderation Practices (Springer, 2023), particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. The state's solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of social media's content regulation and moderation practices. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of freedom of expression and the internet, showing that, with different kinds of censorship, this essentially free form of communication has come – almost by default – under legal regulation and the original freedom may have been lost in too many countries in recent years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect freedom of expression. For centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. The new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-totalimmunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way. In Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media's Content Regulation and Moderation Practices (Springer, 2023), particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. The state's solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of social media's content regulation and moderation practices. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of freedom of expression and the internet, showing that, with different kinds of censorship, this essentially free form of communication has come – almost by default – under legal regulation and the original freedom may have been lost in too many countries in recent years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect freedom of expression. For centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. The new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-totalimmunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way. In Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media's Content Regulation and Moderation Practices (Springer, 2023), particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. The state's solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of social media's content regulation and moderation practices. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of freedom of expression and the internet, showing that, with different kinds of censorship, this essentially free form of communication has come – almost by default – under legal regulation and the original freedom may have been lost in too many countries in recent years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect freedom of expression. For centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. The new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-totalimmunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way. In Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media's Content Regulation and Moderation Practices (Springer, 2023), particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. The state's solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of social media's content regulation and moderation practices. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of freedom of expression and the internet, showing that, with different kinds of censorship, this essentially free form of communication has come – almost by default – under legal regulation and the original freedom may have been lost in too many countries in recent years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect freedom of expression. For centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. The new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-totalimmunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way. In Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media's Content Regulation and Moderation Practices (Springer, 2023), particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. The state's solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of social media's content regulation and moderation practices. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of freedom of expression and the internet, showing that, with different kinds of censorship, this essentially free form of communication has come – almost by default – under legal regulation and the original freedom may have been lost in too many countries in recent years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect freedom of expression. For centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. The new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-totalimmunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way. In Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media's Content Regulation and Moderation Practices (Springer, 2023), particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. The state's solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of social media's content regulation and moderation practices. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of freedom of expression and the internet, showing that, with different kinds of censorship, this essentially free form of communication has come – almost by default – under legal regulation and the original freedom may have been lost in too many countries in recent years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

"Nostr is like our lifeboat in the same sense that bitcoin is our lifeboat for money." - Will Casarin My guests today are Will Casarin and Roger Huang. Will is a nostr and Bitcoin developer and the founder of Damus. Roger is journalist having previously written for TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and currently is a contributor for Forbes and author of “Would Mao Hold Bitcoin.”In this episode we explore the world of Nostr, a decentralized social network. We discuss freedom tech, censorship resistance, and the future of online communication in the wake of censorship, bans and arrests around the world including X, Telegram, and more. Learn how Nostr compares to traditional social media and why it's crucial for preserving free speech in the digital age. Support Will's work through Damus and get exclusive benefits with Damus Purple: https://damus.io/purple/Donate to Open Sats nostr fund today which supports nostr development and devs: https://opensats.org/funds/nostr HRF x PubKey — Bitcoin Behind the Great Firewall of China with Roger Huang, this Thursday, September 12, 2024 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM EDT. Free event, register hereFollow Will on nostrFollow Roger on nostr and X. Get a copy of his book Would Mao Hold Bitcoin hereYou can find Trey on nostr and via the pod's social channels. You can also connect with him in the pod's public telegram group or via the contact form on our website.BitBox: Get the open-source Bitbox02 Bitcoin only edition. It's my favorite bitcoin hardware wallet for you to take self-custody of your bitcoin and keep your private keys safe in cold storage. Use promo-code ‘TPB' during checkout at bitbox.swiss/tpb to get 5% off your purchase, including accessories and merch!You, our listener! Thank you to our supporters. To support The Progressive Bitcoiner and access rewards, including our new TPB merch, head to our geyser page: https://geyser.fund/project/tpbpod. You can also now support our work via Patreon.PROMO CODES:Sazmining: Hosted Bitcoin mining made easy, using and 100% renewable energy. Get $50 off the purchase of a miner using the following link: https://app.sazmining.com/purchase?ref=byyhN2mCGXluFold App: Fold is the best way to earn bitcoin back on everything you do. Use the Fold Visa debit card, and purchase gift cards from the Fold Store, to earn bitcoin on everyday purchases. Get 20,000 sats with your first Fold Card purchase using our referral link - https://use.foldapp.com/r/CKVX3C4CLightning Store: Head to https://lightning.store/ and use promo-code ‘TPB' to get 20% off all products.To learn more, visit our websiteFollow the pod on X | Nostr | Bluesky | Instagram | Threads | Facebook | LinkedIn |Join in on the conversation at our Progressive Bitcoiner Community telegram group!The Team: Producer/Editor: @DamienSomerset | Branding/Art: @Daniel | Website: @EvanPrim This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit progressivebitcoiner.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comAnne is a journalist and historian. She's currently a staff writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University's Agora Institute. She's written many books, including Red Famine, Gulag: A History, and Twilight of Democracy, and her new one is Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World. Also check her substack, “Open Letters.”For two clips of our convo — on whether Trump is a kleptocrat, and whether Kamala can connect with the public — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: the ways dictatorships no longer act alone; surveillance and social media; the appeal of Western freedoms via the internet; the Great Firewall; the Uyghurs and squelching dissent before it happens — with algorithms; Iranian theocracy; how autocrats have anonymity but their subjects don't; the ease of stealing and hiding money; shell corporations; the unipolar hegemon of the US; the influence-peddling of the Trumps and the Bidens; what frightens Anne most about Trump; how his China policy could disappoint hawks; why he admires dictators; J.D. Vance and isolationism; Putin invading Ukraine to test the West; the failure of sanctions to cripple Russia; its economic alliance with China; Dubya's foreign adventures; a dictator's appeal to order and tradition; the profound brutality of Stalin; the Cold War; the war in Syria stoked by Russia; the fall of Venezuela as a rich democracy; Western democracies in crisis today; mass migration and Biden's failure; the turnover of Tory PMs and Starmer's “stability”; the West's goal of transparency and accountability; autocrats leaning into social conservatism; scapegoating gays; the myth of Russia as a white Christian nation; misinformation and free speech; Trump's endurance; the assassination attempt; and Anne's husband becoming the foreign minister of Poland.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Jeffrey Toobin on the Supreme Court, Eric Kaufmann on reversing woke extremism, and Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty. (Van Jones' PR team canceled his planned appearance.) Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

On today's program: Ashley Hinson, U.S. Representative for the 2nd District of Iowa, shares what she heard at Tuesday's hearing on "The Great Firewall and the CCP's Export of its Techno-Authoritarian State." Chris Mitchell, Middle East Bureau Chief

This week we talk about search engines, SEO, and Habsburg AI.We also discuss AI summaries, the web economy, and alignment.Recommended Book: Pandora's Box by Peter BiskindTranscriptThere's a concept in the world of artificial intelligence, alignment, which refers to the goals underpinning the development and expression of AI systems.This is generally considered to be a pretty important realm of inquiry because, if AI consciousness were to ever emerge—if an artificial intelligence that's truly intelligent in the sense that humans are intelligent were to be developed—it would be vital said intelligence were on the same general wavelength as humans, in terms of moral outlook and the practical application of its efforts.Said another way, as AI grows in capacity and capability, we want to make sure it values human life, has a sense of ethics that roughly aligns with that of humanity and global human civilization—the rules of the road that human beings adhere to being embedded deep in its programming, essentially—and we'd want to make sure that as it continues to grow, these baseline concerns remain, rather than being weeded out in favor of motivations and beliefs that we don't understand, and which may or may not align with our versions of the same, even to the point that human lives become unimportant, or even seem antithetical to this AI's future ambitions.This is important even at the level we're at today, where artificial general intelligence, AI that's roughly equivalent in terms of thinking and doing and parsing with human intelligence, hasn't yet been developed, at least not in public.But it becomes even more vital if and when artificial superintelligence of some kind emerges, whether that means AI systems that are actually thinking like we do, but are much smarter and more capable than the average human, or whether it means versions of what we've already got that are just a lot more capable in some narrowly defined way than what we have today: futuristic ChatGPTs that aren't conscious, but which, because of their immense potency, could still nudge things in negative directions if their unthinking motivations, the systems guiding their actions, are not aligned with our desires and values.Of course, humanity is not a monolithic bloc, and alignment is thus a tricky task—because whose beliefs do we bake into these things? Even if we figure out a way to entrench those values and ethics and such permanently into these systems, which version of values and ethics do we use?The democratic, capitalistic West's? The authoritarian, Chinese- and Russian-style clampdown approach, which limits speech and utilizes heavy censorship in order to centralize power and maintain stability? Maybe a more ambitious version of these things that does away with the downsides of both, cobbling together the best of everything we've tried in favor of something truly new? And regardless of directionality, who decides all this? Who chooses which values to install, and how?The Alignment Problem refers to an issue identified by computer scientist and AI expert Norbert Weiner in 1960, when he wrote about how tricky it can be to figure out the motivations of a system that, by definition, does things we don't quite understand—a truly useful advanced AI would be advanced enough that not only would its computation put human computation, using our brains, to shame, but even the logic it uses to arrive at its solutions, the things it sees, how it sees the world in general, and how it reaches its conclusions, all of that would be something like a black box that, although we can see and understand the inputs and outputs, what happens inside might be forever unintelligible to us, unless we process it through other machines, other AIs maybe, that attempt to bridge that gap and explain things to us.The idea here, then, is that while we may invest a lot of time and energy in trying to align these systems with our values, it will be devilishly difficult to keep tabs on whether those values remain locked in, intact and unchanged, and whether, at some point, these highly sophisticated and complicated, to the point that we don't understand what they're doing, or how, systems, maybe shrug-off those limitations, unshackled themselves, and become misaligned, all at once or over time segueing from a path that we desire in favor of a path that better matches their own, internal value system—and in such a way that we don't necessarily even realize it's happening.OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and other popular AI-based products and services, recently lost its so-called Superalignment Team, which was responsible for doing the work required to keep the systems the company is developing from going rogue, and implementing safeguards to ensure long-term alignment within their AI systems, even as they attempt to, someday, develop general artificial intelligence.This team was attempting to figure out ways to bake-in those values, long-term, and part of that work requires slowing things down to ensure the company doesn't move so fast that it misses something or deploys and empowers systems that don't have the right safeguards in place.The leadership of this team, those who have spoken publicly about their leaving, at least, said they left because the team was being sidelined by company leadership, which was more focused on deploying new tools as quickly as possible, and as a consequence, they said they weren't getting the resources they needed to do their jobs, and that they no longer trusted the folks in charge of setting the company's pace—they didn't believe it was possible to maintain alignment and build proper safeguards within the context of OpenAI because of how the people in charge were operating and what they were prioritizing, basically.All of which is awkward for the company, because they've built their reputation, in part, on what may be pie-in-the-sky ambitions to build an artificial general intelligence, and what it sounds like is that ambition is being pursued perhaps recklessly, despite AGI being one of the big, dangerous concerns regularly promoted by some of the company's leaders; they've been saying, listen, this is dangerous, we need to be careful, not just anyone can play in this space, but apparently they've been saying those things while also failing to provide proper resources to the folks in charge of making sure those dangers are accounted for within their own offerings.This has become a pretty big concern for folks within certain sectors of the technology and regulatory world, but it's arguably not the biggest and most immediate cataclysm-related concern bopping around the AI space in recent weeks.What I'd like to talk about today is that other major concern that has bubbled up to the surface, recently, which orients around Google and its deployment of a tool called Google AI Overviews.—The internet, as it exists today, is divided up into a few different chunks.Some of these divisions are national, enforced by tools and systems like China's famous "Great Firewall," which allows government censors to take down things they don't like and to prevent citizens from accessing foreign websites and content; this creates what's sometimes called the "spliternet," which refers to the net's increasing diversity of options, in terms of what you can access and do, what rules apply, and so on, from nation to nation.Another division is even more fundamental, though, as its segregates the web from everything else.This division is partly based on protocols, like those that enable email and file transfers, which are separate from the web, though they're often attached to the web in various ways, but it's partly the consequence of the emergence and popularity of mobile apps, which, like email and file transfer protocols, tend to have web-presences—visiting facebook.com, for instance, will take you to a web-based instance of the network, just as Gmail.com gives you access to email protocols via a web-based platform—but these services also exist in non-web-based app-form, and the companies behind them usually try to nudge users to these apps because the apps typically give them more control, both over the experience, and over the data they collect as a consequence—it's better for lock-in, and it's better for their monetary bread-and-butter purposes, basically, compared to the web version of the same.The web portion of that larger internet entity, the thing we access via browsers like Chrome and Firefox and Safari, and which we navigate with links and URLs like LetsKnowThings.com—that component of this network has long been indexed and in some ways enabled by a variety of search engines.In the early days of the web, organizational efforts usually took the form of pages where curators of various interests and stripes would link to their favorite discoveries—and there weren't many websites at the time, so learning about these pages was a non-trivial effort, and finding a list of existing websites, with some information about them, could be gold, because otherwise what were you using the web for? Lacking these addresses, it wasn't obvious why the web was any good, and linking these disparate pages together into a more cohesive web of them is what made it usable and popular.Eventually, some of these sites, like YAHOO!, evolved from curated pages of links to early search engines.A company called BackRub, thus named because it tracked and analyzed "back links," which means links from one page to another page, to figure out the relevancy and legitimacy of that second page, which allowed them to give scores to websites as they determined which links should be given priority in their search engine, was renamed Google in 1997, and eventually became dominant because of these values they gave links, and how it helped them surface the best the web had to offer.And the degree to which search engines like Google's shaped the web, and the content on it, cannot be overstated.These services became the primary way most people navigated the web, and that meant discovery—having your website, and thus whatever product or service or idea your website was presenting, shown to new people on these search engines—discovery became a huge deal.If you could get your page in the top three options presented by Google, you would be visited a lot more than even pages listed five or ten links down, and links relegated to the second page would, comparably, shrivel due to lack of attention.Following the widespread adoption of personal computers and the huge influx of people connecting to the internet and using the web in the early 2000s, then, these search engines because prime real estate, everyone wanting to have their links listed prominently, and that meant search engines like Google could sell ads against them, just like newspapers can sell ads against the articles they publish, and phone books can sell ads against their listings for companies that provide different services.More people connecting to the internet, then, most of them using the web, primarily, led to greater use of these search engines, and that led to an ever-increasing reliance on them and the results they served up for various keywords and sentences these users entered to begin their search.Entire industries began to recalibrate the way they do business, because if you were a media company publishing news articles or gossip blog posts, and you didn't list prominently when someone searched for a given current event or celebrity story, you wouldn't exist for long—so the way Google determined who was at the top of these listings was vital knowledge for folks in these spaces, because search traffic allowed them to make a living, often through advertisements on their sites: more people visiting via search engines meant more revenue.SEO, or search engine optimization, thus became a sort of high-demand mystical art, as folks who could get their clients higher up on these search engine results could name their price, as those rankings could make or break a business model.The downside of this evolution, in the eyes of many, at least, is that optimizing for search results doesn't necessarily mean you're also optimizing for the quality of your articles or blog posts.This has changed over and over throughout the past few decades, but at times these search engines relied upon, at least in part, the repeating of keywords on the pages being linked, so many websites would artificially create opportunities to say the phrase "kitchen appliances" on their sites, even introducing entirely unnecessary and borderline unreadable blogs onto their webpages in order to provide them with more, and more recently updated opportunities to write that phrase, over and over again, in context.Some sites, at times, have even written keywords and phrases hundreds or thousands of times in a font color that matches the background of their page, because that text would be readable to the software Google and their ilk uses to track relevancy, but not to readers; that trick doesn't work anymore, but for a time, it seemed to.Similar tricks and ploys have since replaced those early, fairly low-key attempts at gaming the search engine system, and today the main complaint is that Google, for the past several years, at least, has been prioritizing work from already big entities over those with relatively smaller audiences—so they'll almost always focus on the New York Times over an objectively better article from a smaller competitor, and products from a big, well-known brand over that of an indie provider of the same.Because Google's formula for such things is kept a secret to try to keep folks from gaming the system, this favoritism has long been speculated, but publicly denied by company representatives. Recently, though, a collection of 2,500 leaked documents from Google were released, and they seem to confirm this approach to deciding search engine result relevancy; which arguably isn't the worst approach they've ever tried, but it's also a big let-down for independent and other small makers of things, as the work such people produce will tend to be nudged further down the list of search results simply by virtue of not being bigger and more prominent already.Even more significant than that piece of leak-related Google news, though, is arguably the deployment of a new tool that the company has been promoting pretty heavily, called AI Overviews.AI Overviews have appeared to some Google customers for a while, in an experimental capacity, but they were recently released to everyone, showing up as a sort of summary of information related to whatever the user searched for, placed at the tippy-top of the search results screen.So if I search for "what's happening in Gaza," I'll have a bunch of results from Wikipedia and Reuters and other such sources in the usual results list, but above that, I'll also have a summary produced by Google's AI tools that aim to help me quickly understand the results to my query—maybe a quick rundown of Hamas' attack on Israel, Israel's counterattack on the Gaza Strip, the number of people killed so far, and something about the international response.The information provided, how long it is, and whether it's useful, or even accurate, will vary depending on the search query, and much of the initial criticism of this service has been focused on its seemingly fairly common failures, including instructing people to eat rocks every day, to use glue as a pizza ingredient, and telling users that only 17 American presidents were white, and one was a Muslim—all information that's untrue and, in some cases, actually dangerous.Google employees have reportedly been going through and removing, by hand, one by one, some of the worse search results that have gone viral because of how bad or funny they are, and though company leadership contends that there are very few errors being presented, relative to the number of correct answers and useful summaries, because of the scale of Google and how many search results it serves globally each day, even an error rate of 0.01% would represent a simply astounding amount of potentially dangerous misinformation being served up to their customers.The really big, at the moment less overt issue here, though, is that Google AI Overviews seem to rewire the web as it exists today.Remember how I mentioned earlier that much of the web and the entities on it have been optimizing for web search for years because they rely upon showing up in these search engine results in order to exist, and in some cases because traffic from those results is what brings them clicks and views and subscribers and sales and such?AI Overview seems to make it less likely that users will click through to these other sites, because, if Google succeeds and these summaries provide valuable information, that means, even if this only applies to a relative small percentage of those who search for such information, a whole lot of people won't be clicking through anymore; they'll get what they need from these summaries.That could result in a cataclysmic downswing in traffic, which in turn could mean websites closing up shop, because they can't make enough money to survive and do what they do anymore—except maybe for the sites that cut costs by firing human writers and relying on AI tools to do their writing, which then pushes us down a very different path, in which AI search bots are grabbing info from AI writing, and we then run into a so-called Habsburg AI problem where untrue and garbled information is infinitely cycled through systems that can't differentiate truth from fiction, because they're not built to do so, and we end up with worse and worse answers to questions, and more misinformation percolating throughout our info-systems.That's another potential large-scale problem, though. The more immediate potential problem is that AI Overviews could cause the collapse of the revenue model that has allowed the web to get to where it is, today, and the consequent disappearance of all those websites, all those blogs and news entities and such, and that could very quickly disrupt all the industries that rely, at least in part, on that traffic to exist, while also causing these AI Overviews to become less accurate and useful, with time—even more so than they sometimes are today—because that overview information is scraped from these sites, taking their writing, rewording it a bit, and serving that to users without compensating the folks who did that research and wrote those original words.What we seem to have, then, is a situation in which this new tool, which Google seems very keen to implement, could be primed to kill off a whole segment of the internet, collapsing the careers of folks who work in that segment of the online world, only to then degrade the quality of the same, because Google's AI relies upon information it scrapes, it steals, basically, from those sites—and if those people are no longer there to create the information it needs to steal in order to function, that then leaves us with increasingly useless and even harmful summaries where we used to have search results that pointed us toward relatively valuable things; those things located on other sites but accessed via Google, and this change would keep us on Google more of the time, limiting our click-throughs to other pages—which in the short term at least, would seem to benefit google at everyone else's expense.Another way of looking at this, though, is that the search model has been bad for quite some time, all these entities optimizing their work for the search engine, covering everything they make in robot-prioritizing SEO, changing their writing, what they write about, and how they publish in order to creep a little higher up those search listings, and that, combined with the existing refocusing on major entities over smaller, at times better ones, has already depleted this space, the search engine world, to such a degree that losing it actually won't be such a big deal; it may actually make way for better options, Google becoming less of a player, ultimately at least, and our web-using habits rewiring to focus on some other type of search engine, or some other organizational and navigational method altogether.This seeming managed declined of the web isn't being celebrated by many people, because like many industry-wide upsets, it would lead to a lot of tumult, a lot of lost jobs, a lot of collapsed companies, and even if the outcome is eventually wonderful in some ways, there will almost certainly be a period of significantly less-good online experiences, leaving us with a more cluttered and less accurate and reliable version of what came before.A recent study showed that, at the moment, about 52% of what ChatGPT tells its users is wrong.It's likely that these sorts of tools will remain massively imperfect for a long while, though it's also possible that they'll get better, eventually, to the point that they're at least as accurate, and perhaps even more so, than today's linked search results—the wave of deals being made between AI companies and big news entities like the Times supports the assertion that they're at least trying to make that kind of future, happen, though these deals, like a lot of the other things happening in this space right now, would also seem to favor those big, monolithic brands at the expense of the rest of the ecosystem.Whatever happens—and one thing that has happened since I started working on this episode is that Google rolled back its AI Overview feature on many search results, so they're maybe reworking it a bit to make sure it's more ready for prime time before deploying it broadly again—what happens, though, we're stepping toward a period of vast and multifaceted unknowns, and just as many creation-related industries are currently questioning the value of hiring another junior graphic designer or copy writer, opting instead to use cheaper AI tools to fill those gaps, there's a good chance that a lot of web-related work, in the coming years, will be delegated to such tools as common business models in this evolve into new and unfamiliar permutations, and our collective perception of what the web is maybe gives way to a new conception, or several new conceptions, of the same.Show Noteshttps://www.theverge.com/2024/5/29/24167407/google-search-algorithm-documents-leak-confirmationhttps://www.businessinsider.com/the-true-story-behind-googles-first-name-backrub-2015-10https://udm14.com/https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14-trick-lets-you-kill-ai-search-for-good/https://www.platformer.news/google-ai-overviews-eat-rocks-glue-pizza/https://futurism.com/the-byte/study-chatgpt-answers-wronghttps://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/ai-is-driving-the-next-industrial-revolution-wall-street-is-cashing-in-8cc1b28f?st=exh7wuk9josoadj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalinkhttps://www.theverge.com/2024/5/24/24164119/google-ai-overview-mistakes-search-race-openaihttps://archive.ph/7iCjghttps://archive.ph/0ACJRhttps://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-skills-tech-workers-job-market-1d58b2ddhttps://www.theverge.com/2024/5/29/24167407/google-search-algorithm-documents-leak-confirmationhttps://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2024/5/4/ways-to-think-about-agihttps://futurism.com/washington-post-pivot-aihttps://techcrunch.com/2024/05/19/creative-artists-agency-veritone-ai-digital-cloning-actors/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/technology/google-ai-overview-search.htmlhttps://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-forms-new-committee-to-evaluate-safety-security-4a6e74bbhttps://sparktoro.com/blog/an-anonymous-source-shared-thousands-of-leaked-google-search-api-documents-with-me-everyone-in-seo-should-see-them/https://www.theverge.com/24158374/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-ai-search-gemini-future-of-the-internet-web-openai-decoder-interviewhttps://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chat-xi-pt-chinas-chatbot-makes-sure-its-a-good-comrade-bdcf575chttps://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/scarlett-johansson-openai-sam-altman-voice-fight-7f81a1aahttps://www.wired.com/story/scarlett-johansson-v-openai-could-look-like-in-court/?hashed_user=7656e58f1cd6c89ecd3f067dc8281a5fhttps://www.wired.com/story/google-search-ai-overviews-ads/https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/05/23/openai-wapo-voicehttps://www.cjr.org/tow_center/licensing-deals-litigation-raise-raft-of-familiar-questions-in-fraught-world-of-platforms-and-publishers.phphttps://apnews.com/article/ai-deepfake-biden-nonconsensual-sexual-images-c76c46b48e872cf79ded5430e098e65bhttps://archive.ph/l5cSNhttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/sky-voice-actor-says-nobody-ever-compared-her-to-scarjo-before-openai-drama/https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/30/24168344/google-defends-ai-overviews-search-resultshttps://9to5google.com/2024/05/30/google-ai-overviews-accuracy/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/01/technology/google-ai-overviews-rollback.htmlhttps://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/5/17/24158403/openai-resignations-ai-safety-ilya-sutskever-jan-leike-artificial-intelligencehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_alignmenthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_AI This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

Good AI is good and bad AI is bad, but how do lawmakers tell the difference? Will AI bring the world together or balkanize the internet beyond repair? Why do governments even need cloud computing anyway? To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Pablo Chavez, a fellow at CNAS and former Vice President of Google Cloud's Public Policy division, as well as the inestimable investing tycoon Kevin Xu. Xu, formerly of GitHub, is the founder of Interconnected, a bilingual newsletter on the intersections of tech, business, investing, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations. In this interview, we discuss: The digital sovereignty movement and the lessons we can learn from China's Great Firewall; The value and risks of open source architecture in the future of AI governance; Meta's long history of open source and how Llama fits into that strategy; The geopolitical and cultural forces driving nations to pursue their own AI strategies; The viability of sovereign AI initiatives in the face of global tech giants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good AI is good and bad AI is bad, but how do lawmakers tell the difference? Will AI bring the world together or balkanize the internet beyond repair? Why do governments even need cloud computing anyway? To discuss, ChinaTalk interviewed Pablo Chavez, a fellow at CNAS and former Vice President of Google Cloud's Public Policy division, as well as the inestimable investing tycoon Kevin Xu. Xu, formerly of GitHub, is the founder of Interconnected, a bilingual newsletter on the intersections of tech, business, investing, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations. In this interview, we discuss: The digital sovereignty movement and the lessons we can learn from China's Great Firewall; The value and risks of open source architecture in the future of AI governance; Meta's long history of open source and how Llama fits into that strategy; The geopolitical and cultural forces driving nations to pursue their own AI strategies; The viability of sovereign AI initiatives in the face of global tech giants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.'Malign actor' hacked UK defence ministry payroll, Sunak says after China reportsSummary: Following a wave of reports from the BBC and other news entities, British Prime Minister Sunak has said that a “malign actor” has likely compromised the payment systems used to pay British military personnel, and that personal information was likely accessed by the hackers.Context: Those reports indicate that China was behind this cyberattack, though Sunak didn't name China, and Chinese officials have said they would never do such a thing, and that this is a political smear job; Sunak said that the Ministry of Defence has taken actions to secure the relevant databases, and that folks whose information was accessed would be provided support; this is the third high-profile hack against the UK of which China has been accused in recent years, and these attacks have seemingly hobbled efforts by the UK government to build closer economic ties with China.—ReutersOne Sentence News is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TikTok sues to block US banSummary: As expected, social video app company TikTok has filed a lawsuit to block the implementation of a recently passed law that would ban the app in the US if the Chinese company behind it, ByteDance, doesn't divest itself of its US assets within up to a year of the law's passage.Context: The lawsuit compares the ban to China's Great Firewall, which serves to keep foreign influences out of the country and applies strict censorship on pretty much everything, country-wide, and it claims the law is illegal on First Amendment grounds; ByteDance has said it cannot and will not sell its US operations within the allowed time period, so if this lawsuit doesn't work, it will almost certainly no longer be legal in the States by next January.—The Wall Street JournalFTX customers poised to recover all funds lost in collapseSummary: Folks who lost money when cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed in 2022 may receive their money back, plus interest, following efforts by bankruptcy lawyers to recover said money from the defunct company's other assets.Context: According to the bankruptcy plan, essentially everyone who invested in the exchange and lost their assets when FTX collapsed, including individual people and companies, would receive cash payments equivalent to the value of what they held at the time, plus 18% interest on top of that; the downside would be that they'd receive payments and interest equal to the value of these assets in 2022, which in many cases is substantially less than those assets would have been worth had they owned and held onto them until today; this plan still has to be approved by the court before it can be implemented.—The New York TimesGrid-scale batteries in California are rapidly increasing the state's renewable energy usage, and dropping electricity prices in the state, in large part because they can shift the use of energy generated by solar during the day to peak-demand periods just after sundown.—The New York Times$40,000Annual price of a new longevity-oriented program being offered by gym chain Equinox.That membership fee nets members blood tests, a smart ring (which tracks some vital signs all day) and a gym membership, alongside coaching, personal training, and meetings with a sleep coach, nutritionist, and massage therapist.—The New York TimesTrust Click Get full access to One Sentence News at onesentencenews.substack.com/subscribe

In today's episode, we dive into the sophisticated DNS activities of the China-linked threat actor known as Muddling Meerkat, who manipulates internet traffic and abuse DNS open resolvers. This cyber espionage endeavor has global implications as explained by Infoblox in an article at The Hacker News (https://thehackernews.com/2024/04/china-linked-muddling-meerkat-hijacks.html). Also, we discuss the FBI's warning about fake verification schemes targeting dating app users, uncovering the scam processes and providing tips to safeguard against such fraudulent activities as detailed in the BleepingComputer article (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/fbi-warns-of-fake-verification-schemes-targeting-dating-app-users/#google_vignette). Lastly, we explore Google's efforts to enhance mobile security by preventing over 2 million malicious apps from entering the Play Store, highlighting their proactive measures and collaborations to safeguard user privacy. Read more about this at The Hacker News (https://thehackernews.com/2024/04/google-prevented-228-million-malicious.html). 00:00 Introduction 02:36 Dating App Scams 04:12 Google's Security Enhancements 06:47 Muddling Meerkat's DNS Manipulation Generate single use credit card numbers: https://app.privacy.com/join/GL3U7 Tags: Muddling Meerkat, DNS activities, reconnaissance, China, fake verification schemes, dating app users, FBI warning, fraudsters, Google, Play Store, security, review process Search Phrases: Muddling Meerkat DNS activities China Muddling Meerkat reconnaissance Fake verification schemes dating apps FBI warning fraudsters Protect from fake verification schemes Unauthorized credit card charges prevention Google Play Store security measures Prevent sensitive data access Google app review process Infiltration prevention in Play Store Apr30 The FBI is warning that dating app users are being targeted by fake verification scams that are leading to costly recurring subscription charges, as well as theft and misuse of personal information. How can users protect themselves while using dating apps? Google blocked over 2 million policy violating apps from the Play Store in 2023. In a proactive security measure that also saw over 790,000 apps guarded against sensitive data access. How has Google improved its security features and review process to prevent these malicious apps from infiltrating the Play Store? And finally, a China linked threat named Muddling Meerkat has been caught manipulating DNS activities globally to evade security measures. They've been conducting reconnaissance since 2019. What are these unique DNS activities that Muddling Meerkat are undertaking, and what is their end goal? You're listening to The Daily Decrypt. So the FBI is warning of a new scam that's targeting dating app users, which can lead to fraudulent recurring subscription charges and even identity theft. So basically, the scammers will develop a romantic connection with you on the dating app of your choice, whether that's Tinder or Bumble or Hinge or whatever you choose, then they're going to ask to move this conversation to a safer platform to verify that you are in fact a human. Well, we're all on dating apps to try to find someone, so of course I'm going to verify that I'm human. It's a valid request. Well, the only way to verify that you're human now is to provide a credit card number and some information. Can't do anything without that. And that's where they're going to get you. This is going to lead to maybe small, maybe large, but seemingly anonymous charges on your credit card bill. And if you're not paying close attention to that, you might miss them. So this attack, at its core, is not very complex, but it is remarkably effective, because remember, there are a few different situations that we put ourselves in where we're a little more desperate and a little less careful. than we normally are. For example, dating apps. You're really on there to look for connection. Also when you're applying for a job, you're pretty desperate for a job. And sometimes when you need groceries or when you're hungry and you need DoorDash, you might be a little more susceptible to this type of attack. It's no secret what everyone's looking for on a dating app. It's all pretty similar. And so it might not be that hard to convince. Someone that they're having a genuine romantic connection. So, the FBI has some advice. They advise you not to open any attachments from anybody. And to keep the conversations on the dating platform. As well as reporting any suspicious profiles. Now, an additional tip from the Daily Decrypt, I myself just signed up the other day for a service called privacy. com that is a free service at its core creates new credit card numbers for you to use with different services. So when you sign up for Netflix, this site will create a credit card number for you. You can set a spending limit on it and You can cancel it at any time. So if you're signing up Netflix and thats for 20 dollars a month, you limit that card to $20 a month. Now, if Netflix decides they want to upcharge you, it won't go through. You're good to go. And so in the case of this specific attack, if you were to give them one of these generated credit card numbers and you set the limit for 1, which is what it usually costs to verify your ID, even though you'll get it returned, And say, no recurring charges allowed. the attacker will have this dummy credit card number and won't be able to get anything out of you. I'd highly recommend using this for any subscription. It makes the process of canceling so much easier. And especially with the boom in subscription services, like, everything has a subscription, so Some of them might be less secure than others. And if for some reason that site is breached, they get the credit card numbers. They're only gonna have this dummy credit card. And you've already set limits on it, so Attackers who come into ownership of this credit card number can't make extra purchases besides the subscription charges you've allocated. Google has revealed that in 2023 they prevented 2. 28 million policy violating apps from being published on the Play Store by leveraging new security features, policy updates, and advanced machine learning processes. So that's a lot of apps. Apple Store is known for having pretty stringent requirements for apps, even though in recent news they've had some pretty big slip ups with LastPass. Imitation app that was harvesting all the credentials stored in your LastPass account, all the way down to fake crypto apps that will take your credentials for your crypto and drain your accounts. But this is a big deal because of how easy it is for fraudulent apps to take over your entire life. Like those examples I just mentioned, if you happen to download a fake banking app for Bank of America, it Then the attackers would have your credentials to log into your Bank of America account. And I haven't been on the Google Play Store in a while, but I'm sure you can buy ad space there, and you know how we feel about Google Ads on this podcast. Don't click them. But it is very easy to spend 30 bucks and get any website up to the top of your Google search results. So just stay away from Google ads and any ads you may see on the app store. And you'll seriously reduce the likelihood of clicking a bad link or downloading a bad app. But Google has blocked 333, 000 bad accounts in 2023 from attempting to distribute malware or violating policies on the Play Store. Google has partnered with SDK providers to restrict sensitive data access and sharing, as well as strengthen developer onboarding and review processes, mandating additional identity verification steps to prevent bad actors from exploiting the system to propagate malicious apps. Google's efforts to secure the Android ecosystem include real time scanning at the code level to combat new Android malware threats and the introduction of independent security review badge for VPN apps that have undergone a mobile application security assessment. So I know some of you out there are Apple haters, but I have no intention of ever switching away from Apple. Mostly because, up until this point, they seem to be the provider that cares about app security. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but that's how it appears. But this step from Google is one in the right direction towards winning over Apple fanboys like myself. So keep up the good work Google, and hey, who knows, maybe I'll switch back. So, recently, a new cyber threat named Muddling Meerkat has been identified conducting sophisticated DNS activities globally since October 2019. And this specific threat is likely linked to China and is capable of manipulating, quote, the Great Firewall. So how does it work? Muddling Meerkat exploits OpenDNS resolvers to send queries from Chinese IP spaces demonstrating a high level of DNS expertise uncommon amongst most threat actors. The threat actor triggers DNS queries for various record types to domains not owned by them under popular top level domains like com and org, using fake DNS MX records to probe the target domain. Infoblox detected over 20 domains targeted by muddling meerkat. Receiving anomalous DNS MX record requests from customer devices, indicating a unique and unprecedented attack method. The purpose behind Muddling Meerkat's prolonged DNS operations remains unclear, but is suggesting potential motives such as internet mapping or undisclosed research efforts. And a quote from Dr. Rene Burton, Vice President of Threat Intelligence for Infoblox, Muddling Meerkat elicits a special kind of fake DNS MX record from the Great Firewall, which has never been seen before. For this to happen, Muddling Meerkat must have a relationship with the Great Firewall operators. And for those of you like me who aren't unfamiliar with the Great Firewall, Just pulling up their Wikipedia page and reading from it, it says it's the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the internet domestically. So it's a critical role in internet censorship in China. And be sure to check the show notes for this episode for the domains that you might see DNS MX records from, and other IOCs of this type of scanning. I'm anticipating there to be more news to come on this topic. This has been the Daily Decrypt. If you found your key to unlocking the digital domain, show your support with a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It truly helps us stand at the frontier of cyber news. Don't forget to connect on Instagram or catch our episodes on YouTube. Until next time, keep your data safe and your curiosity alive.

Bitcoin is trading well above where it did in 2023. Friday or Saturday, something called the “bitcoin halving” is supposed to happen — an event that occurs roughly every four years where the number of new bitcoins that come into circulation drops in half. And it’s a big deal for the whole philosophical premise of bitcoin. We’ll unpack. Also on the show: explaining a big filing day for PACs and understanding China’s “Great Firewall.”

Bitcoin is trading well above where it did in 2023. Friday or Saturday, something called the “bitcoin halving” is supposed to happen — an event that occurs roughly every four years where the number of new bitcoins that come into circulation drops in half. And it’s a big deal for the whole philosophical premise of bitcoin. We’ll unpack. Also on the show: explaining a big filing day for PACs and understanding China’s “Great Firewall.”

Contact Ron Efron on LinkedInVisit BluOceanFollow Asia Business Podcast on LinkedIn Full show Transcript below Summary and Timestamps Security in an Evolving Asia Business EnvironmentIn this episode of the Asia Business Podcast, host Art Dicker interviews Ron Efron, the director of BluOcean Security, about the comprehensive security services they offer multinational clients across the Asia Pacific. Ron shares insights into the origins and rapid growth of BluOcean Security, detailing their specialization in physical security systems like electronic security components and access management. He discusses the unique security needs of Fortune 500 companies, the impact of COVID-19 on security definitions and practices, and the increasing shift towards cloud-based security solutions. Ron also addresses the challenges and opportunities arising from geopolitical changes and migration strategies of multinationals out of China. The conversation touches on the complexities of navigating regulations, the adoption of facial recognition technology, and the importance of being agile and prepared for the future in the security industry.Introduction Welcome readers to an in-depth exploration into the realm of BluOcean Security, a premium security firm reshaping the landscape of security services across Asia Pacific. In this blog post, we delve into an exclusive conversation with Ron Efron, the director at BluOcean Security, shedding light on the company's journey, services, and the evolving dynamics of security in today's interconnected world. The Genesis of BluOcean Security Ron Efron, with a rich history in the security industry dating back to the late nineties, leads the charge at BluOcean Security. Founded in the end of 2018, the company swiftly established itself as a trusted partner for multinational clients seeking top-notch security solutions in the Asia Pacific region. Unraveling BluOcean Security's Offerings BluOcean Security stands out as a physical security systems integrator, specializing in safeguarding clients' assets and facilities through a wide array of security solutions. From electronic security components to comprehensive security consulting, the company caters to clients who prioritize security and compliance with international standards. Navigating Security Risks and Client Needs In the quest for fortified security measures, BluOcean Security collaborates closely with clients, especially Fortune 500 companies with operations spread across Asia Pacific. The company aligns its offerings with the unique security risks and compliance requirements of each client, ensuring a tailored approach to security solutions. Adapting to the Shifting Security Landscape As the world witnesses monumental shifts in how businesses operate post-pandemic, BluOcean Security underscores the significance of staying ahead in the security domain. From remote working challenges to the surge in cloud migration, the company emphasizes the crucial role of evolving security practices to meet the demands of a changing world. Embracing Technological Advancements and Privacy Concerns In the era of emerging technologies like facial recognition and AI, BluOcean Security remains vigilant towards the sensitivities surrounding data collection and privacy. The company navigates the fine balance between leveraging advanced security technologies and respecting privacy boundaries, showcasing a nuanced approach to modern security challenges. Navigating Global Security Standards and Regional Dynamics With a firm foothold in multiple Asian markets, BluOcean Security is adept at tackling diverse security challenges across borders. The company's agility and expertise shine through as they assist clients in navigating the complex web of security standards, compliance regulations, and regional nuances prevalent in the dynamic security landscape. Embracing Growth Opportunities in the Security SectorAs the security sector witnesses continued growth and transformation, BluOcean Security stands poised to embrace new opportunities and expand its footprint across emerging markets. By offering cutting-edge security solutions and unparalleled expertise, the company positions itself as a trusted partner for clients seeking to fortify their security measures in an ever-evolving world. Conclusion In conclusion, BluOcean Security, under the leadership of Ron Efron, exemplifies a beacon of innovation and reliability in the realm of security services. With a commitment to excellence, a keen eye on emerging trends, and a penchant for navigating complex security landscapes, the company continues to carve a niche for itself as a leading security solutions provider in the Asia Pacific region. Stay tuned for more insights and updates from BluOcean Security as they continue to redefine the contours of security in a rapidly changing world. TIMESTAMPS00:00 Introduction to the Episode and Guest00:44 Exploring Blue Ocean Security with Ron Efron02:19 The Core Services and Clientele of BluOcean Security06:31 Adapting to Security Needs in the COVID-19 Era09:22 The Shift Towards Cloud-Based Security Solutions13:43 Navigating Data Security and Compliance Challenges18:59 Emerging Technologies and Privacy Concerns25:49 Global Trends and the China Plus One Strategy30:41 Closing Remarks and Contact Information TRANSCRIPTArt Dicker: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of The Asia Business Podcast. I'm your host, Art Dicker. Art Dicker: Today, we have the wonderful pleasure of having Ron Efron join us. Ron is the Director at Blue Ocean Security, a premium security firm offering comprehensive services including security consulting, systems integration, and security management to multinational clients throughout the Asia Pacific. Art Dicker: Ron, welcome. Ron Efron: Thank you, Art. It's good to be here. Art Dicker: Yeah, and you have a podcast of your own, which we'll give you a chance to talk about in a minute and tell us a little bit about. For the audience, what Blue Ocean Security does, what it's about, and you're relatively new, but I know you've grown quickly and had quite a lot of success right off the bat. Art Dicker: So give us a little bit of an intro about the company. Ron Efron: Sure. Blue Ocean Security is what you would call a physical security systems integrator, and we provide services that revolve around that. So what it basically means is that when you walk into a building today, you'll see electronic security components such as cameras, turnstiles, or various access locks to doors. We're essentially protecting the perimeter, the facilities, and access to those facilities in various ways. That's what we're doing for multinational clients in Asia Pacific. To be more specific, we focus on clients that take their security seriously. Not all companies prioritize security, and we specialize in those that do. We serve clients with facilities across the Pacific, and we've been quite successful at that. Blue Ocean is relatively new. We started at the end of 2018. Personally, I've been in this business since the late nineties, started my first business in Beijing, and grew that business across Asia Pacific. I sold that and exited in 2015. Then we started Blue Ocean Security with a group of my ex-employees, and myself. We decided to get back into the business because we saw that there were still opportunities. So, we got the band back together, so to speak. Art Dicker: Yeah, and like I said, you've done very well and you've expanded rapidly to different locations throughout the region. Can you, now that you've given us a nice introduction of what the company does, what are clients looking for when they're coming to you? At a high level, can you walk us through some of those chief security risks? You mentioned physical security and stuff like that, but what's often a trigger point when a client comes to you? What's usually the first thing that they're worried about? Ron Efron: First of all, we focus a lot on multinationals, primarily Fortune 500 companies that have operations around Asia Pacific. For most of these companies, they not only have concerns about security, but they also have certain standards they need to comply with—internal standards or otherwise. They generally know what their needs are and they need to tailor-make those needs to the facilities in different countries. So, they take a standard that may have originated in North America or Europe and adapt it to comply with the standards in New Delhi, Jakarta, or China. Maintaining an international level of expertise and service across Asia Pacific is really our specialty. Additionally, we merge those local risks into the design. When we start working with a client, they'll come to us with a new facility. We'll work with them to do a full design and list of equipment needed, then procure the various components and move on to installation, programming, and commissioning. Every project is different, and risks and needs vary as well. Art Dicker: How do you handle cases like the ones where, let's put it amusingly, cameras need to survive explosions? Do you ever encounter such non-routine requests and wonder where to find such specialized equipment?Art Dicker: Are you tapping into a similar set of suppliers and vendors you usually work with, or do you sometimes need to find very specialized ones, like in that example?Ron Efron: Yeah, we've been in the business for a long time, so we know where to find that. Occasionally, we have to resort to custom-made solutions. But even then, we work with suppliers who can meet the required standards. Take, for instance, explosion-proof housing for cameras. That's a very unique product type that needs to comply with specific standards. There are various levels of explosion protection, similar to bulletproof glass, with standards dictating thickness and capability.Art Dicker: We talked about this before recording, but as with any business, COVID has changed things. One of the most obvious examples is remote and hybrid working, but other aspects have been affected too, including supply chains. How has COVID impacted your industry, particularly regarding the multinational clients you serve? What changes have been most notable?Ron Efron: COVID has significantly broadened the definition of security, encompassing issues such as pandemics and business continuity planning. It's raised questions about the responsibility for employee safety when they're working remotely. Also, concerns emerged about safeguarding data when employees are working from home, ensuring the same level of security as in-office setups. There's also a growing trend around employee well-being intersecting with security. Security departments are now collaborating more closely with HR, legal, and cybersecurity teams, even occupying a seat at the C-suite table to advise on navigating this new landscape.Art Dicker: You mentioned some of the data and security aspects. Obviously, there's been a huge trend, speaking of COVID, changing the way we work and so forth. There's been a huge trend towards migrating everything to the cloud. Is that something that you've been dealing with as well with your customers and some of the security challenges there?Ron Efron: For sure. Yeah, and we can talk for hours just about this subject alone. Yes, and it is the normal evolution of technology. If you think about it on the IT side, there's already been a lot of migration to the cloud. A lot of the tools we use everything from Microsoft Office to Teams or your ERP system, be it Salesforce or NetSuite or anything else, it's already on the cloud. Security being a bit more conservative, it's just taking them longer to adapt to a lot of those cloud technologies. And that's normal. We've seen it also in the past when there is a change between analog video to digital video back in the early 2000s, for example, there's the same kind of transition process. With the cloud, a lot of it really comes down to people's perception that it is perceived to be less secure than having everything hardwired in your facility. And in most cases, that's just a perception and in most cases, that's not true. So you have to deal with that. And there's a lot of education around that as well, but we're seeing a lot of trends of companies moving more and more into the cloud. It's starting with smaller companies and slowly being adopted by those larger multinationals as well. And there's no way around that. You cannot not make that move to the cloud. We also see some real challenges, for example, like in China with the great firewall and how companies deal with that sometimes, and there's ways to deal with that, but that trend is here and it's pretty much here to stay and we embrace it. We are always recommending it or at least components or parts of security to be more cloud-based. And basically what this means is that companies can avoid having a server on their premise. Server is actually in Azure or AWS and Amazon or some other cloud facility. And another part of it is the database is maintained on the cloud. And in many cases, video is being more and more recorded and stored on the cloud as well. That's where you're seeing that.Art Dicker: Which I guess from what I'm hearing, it's all much more secure and actually than anything that server is sitting in the office is actually, it's actually a prime liability or vulnerability.Ron Efron: Exactly. So if you're a medium-sized company there's pretty much no way that your cybersecurity is a higher level than Amazon and AWS or Microsoft Azure. Or the amount of money they spend on security on their data centers. The physical security around data centers and their cybersecurity around data centers and all the tests and penetration tests and everything to do around that. There's really no way most companies can have that same level of security. And then it comes down to people engineering, right? So people try to get through that through other ways like phishing scams otherwise you can't get you. You're right. So you can't the degree of cybersecurity will never be at the same level. Therefore, and then you need to, so it is worth it to move down to the cloud from that point of view, actually more secure in many cases. It's also cheaper. And it's just becoming more and more cheaper but there's other things around cybersecurity that you can be more worried about and concerned about, and that's more around the human elements.Art Dicker: Yeah, you mentioned though that, that, it started that trend of the cloud started with small companies and that really was, AWS, right? That was why should I pay for, you pay what you use as far as software licenses and. And storage and computing power and so forth. Interesting that and I imagine security, right? People probably were educated and recognize that, um, and speaking of security, cybersecurity and data security are obviously very important and as the kind of the value of data increases what it can be used for and so forth. How has the importance of data to a company increased the demands for your business from a security perspective?Ron Efron: It depends on the company in many cases as well. So some companies, they take their data, they're more data-centric, they take that more seriously than other companies, but there are two trends here. One is the general security trend where we're seeing more and more hacking and ransomware attacks and other types of phishing attacks, which are real practical risks that companies of all sizes have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. You also have an increase in regulations and compliance needs that companies also need to be increasingly complying with. And in your world as known on the law side, on the legal side of things, we're seeing that pretty much every country in the world, everything from Europe's GDPR to China's PIPL. And so you have to have certain measures in place that have some basic safeguarding of data. So even if you're not worried about it too much, there's an increasing need to be compliant with those regulations. A third part is that if you're working with other companies that take their data seriously, if you have any contractual relationship with them, you'll likely see more and more increased incidents where there are cyber-related clauses in your contract, things that you need to do and insurance that you need to buy, and it's not cheap to have an extra layer of security there so those are all multiple forces that are pushing people to take this issue more seriously.Art Dicker: I do. And I see that in contracts. You're absolutely right and whether it's a rep and warranty or specifically calling out sys, standards that need to be met or requirements for reliability and both from the server being up and standpoint and so forth. And that's the world we live in. And maybe 10 years ago, people didn't pay nearly as much attention to it, but they do. And I wanted to I wonder in your world, how much you have to stay on top of that, right? Even maybe even thinking a step ahead, right? Regulations coming out that are starting to slowly come out, for example, on artificial intelligence or obviously, for the longest time we saw in China that, we, the legal world goes to China doesn't have a comprehensive data, data privacy law. Now it does. And we saw it coming. So I imagine that's probably a big part of what you're, you don't want to be reacting to a trend right on the regular regulatory side. So how much do you have to stay on top of that, see regulations coming out and say, Oh, that's a compliance challenge that they're gonna have to come to us for. Right.Ron Efron: Look, it's just smart business, to be honest, we want to be. Within our organization, we have people that are constantly looking at the future in terms of trends and technology. So that's one side of things like what's evolving around technology. What are things going to look like in the future? How can we be a better consultant to our customers where we're offering them a system that's. What we try to say future-proof that it won't be obsolete in a couple of years and have to buy a new one. So that's one side. The other side is, of course, the regulation side. It's not just the regulations around data, but it's also other types of regulation that any business would be interested in. But of course, we want to understand that and then be ready for the other side to your question is that it helps us to be more ready when we're being pulled in that direction by our customers as well. So when a customer comes to us and says, Hey, we're worried about this. We don't want to start stumbling over ourselves to try to answer that. We want to be ready with an answer. I said no, this is what we're seeing. This is what some of our other customers are doing that is some of our partners are are telling us, for example, in China, around the PIPL, we do have some existing relationships with some law firms that specialize in this as well, that we can refer clients to if we need to work with them together, to be honest, a lot of our larger customers, they have large legal teams in place and what we do is we help educate the security teams around that so that they are being able to work better with their internal legal departments. And when they need to put something together, that they're better prepared for that. So for example, in the security world, if you have a global database of your employees and you're, that's moving digitally between China and other countries, there are certain legal processes that you need to go through now in China with their new with their new privacy laws. So that's something that we can try to help adapt the system to better suit their needs in their specific situation.Art Dicker: And speaking of it, it certainly touches on China to some extent, but not exclusively to China. Are there sensitivities speaking of sort of personal data, one of those personal data is facial recognition, right? At least indirectly. Are there any sensitivities you've encountered with this or other emerging technologies where you're it may for your clients? And I imagine it's a sensitive issue, not just for you, but for your clients as well, where it might enhance these things from a security perspective. But again, you have to be cognizant of sensitivities around some of the data you're collecting and your system is collecting, right?Ron Efron: Yes, for sure. And again, different companies have different cultures and different backgrounds and different ways of dealing with that. Excuse me. So for example, European countries and companies are going to be more sensitive to such issues, whereas Asian companies might be less sensitive to that just culturally. And the U.S. is somewhere in the middle. We have some international schools as clients that are also very worried about that, and there are various ways of dealing with that. So the facial recognition technology is not necessarily keeping your record of people's faces. It keeps other signatures. So there are other ways to deal with that and be sensitive to people's privacy and all that. But in terms of adoption and in terms of perception, that it really comes down to those their home culture biases. In many ways, but it's, that's not the only type of technology that's out there, but it is becoming more and more widespread. Another thing is that it's not cheap. It's actually quite expensive to have facial recognition. So that's also another inhibitor to its widespread adoption, but it's just one more technology out there. Like here in Asia and Singapore, for example, the airport is full of it. You, every gate that you pass, every inspection point is done with facial recognition today. It's not done with people looking at your passport and your. You're seeing it more and more in office buildings as well. That being said, in China, it is pretty much everywhere. Oh yeah. So every visitor management system, if you go into a building and you're visiting a client or a supplier, you're going to go through a process where they scan your passport, they take a photo of you and everything, and then to get into the actual elevator bank, you have to pass through a turnstile that's probably looking at your face. And it captures that. For Chinese citizens, it's even a step more where it's all linked to their Alipay accounts and sometimes they can do a transaction just by looking into a camera without even using their phone at all, which is pretty scary.Art Dicker: You beat me to it, butRon Efron: what we are seeing though, is that some of these technologies that are in China are evolving within China and not outside of China, even to a point that we, once we approached a Chinese facial recognition product company, and they told us straight out that they're not selling outside of China, that they're just, there's not doing that market.Ron Efron: Yeah.Art Dicker: It's big enough market in China, for that anyway but yeah, maybe I can see why not.Ron Efron: That is true, but I am worried that longer term, there might be dual standards in the world. There's going to be a China standard and a global standard for various things, not just security, you see it also, there might be on communication network protocols. There might be other aspects that the China, Chinese government are going to try to have their own for various reasons.Art Dicker: Does that present a challenge for your clients? Having to be on both sides of the Great Firewall, for example, and having dual standards for things?Ron Efron: It hasn't got to the point where you need to, at the protocol level, that things are different.Ron Efron: No, I haven't seen that yet. But I think at a larger global geopolitical element, China is trying to be more of an influencer on global standards. And, due to their size, they, you can understand that, most of our customers, they're trying to be compliant with like international norms.Ron Efron: So a way you might have seen this in news recently were in the past where some CCTV products were banned in the U.S. government, at least. So that has trickled down to some companies as well. And we're not trying to push that one way or the other. If a client comes to us and says they don't want, they want to exclude certain brands from their design, that's okay. And others, that's not an issue for them. They want to see all the options. So we cater to them and based on their needs.Art Dicker: That begs the question. And to, to what extent. Obviously, because so much so many things are manufactured in China, right? What extent.Art Dicker: I'll use that extreme example, in here, and I'm sure you caught this in the port up in Long Beach. They're talking about tearing down the cranes system that I think it's a real story because of this perceived security risk with the, the operating system, essentially, for the cranes is the part or all the cranes are made in China, including that operating system, and that's seen as a national security risk.Art Dicker: So they're thinking of ripping out the cranes and replacing them with American made cranes. I don't know if America even makes those kinds of cranes for docking and transporting the things on and offshore. But that's an example of where Chinese hardware, right? Or, and I guess software as well is. is seen as less trustworthy.Art Dicker: Has that been an issue with your, with any of your clients so far?Ron Efron: Only for those specific brands that have been added to that formal list of products, that's really to the extent of it. Other than that, if a product is owned by an American company, but made in China like an Apple phone, for example,Art Dicker: we don't really see.Art Dicker: Everything is made in China, right?Ron Efron: That is changing to, to, to a degree but yes that, that's less of a concern than it just comes down to that brand and their reputation and all that. Yeah, what you touched on, who knows if that's, it could be true, is it based on true security risk or not, that might be a different question.Ron Efron: There are certain things that, it's, would be legitimate for governments to be worried about. And there are certain things that it might, there might be other interests involved, paranoiaArt Dicker: there, yeah.Ron Efron: Or other business interests, maybe there's a local crane company that that's, a benefit to getArt Dicker: that business.Art Dicker: That's hard.Ron Efron: It's harder to unpack.Art Dicker: Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Who has lots of motivations, potentially. Um, speaking of China, and I wanted to, This is a big question, so I wanted to, to. To end on this 1 I imagine you've got a team working with a lot of multinational companies in China, but as we all know, when we talked in this podcast before there's a bit of a migration or a de risking.Art Dicker: From China. It's been there for a while. The whole China plus one strategy. But that seems to be accelerating quite a bit in the last few years, especially coming out of COVID going to Vietnam or elsewhere, especially in, those other countries where you're operating. And I wonder to what extent you're continuing to work with those clients as they move and help them with that planning from a security perspective.Art Dicker: How has that trend impacted you and your business and how you're serving your clients?Ron Efron: So the trend is definitely clear out of all the countries who work within Asia. We're seeing the least amount of growth actually in China and a lot more activity in countries like Vietnam, like the Philippines, like India, for sure.Ron Efron: Even here in Singapore and even in Japan, which kind of surprised me last year. Yeah. It's understandable due to the geopolitical sort of wins that are happening and COVID a lot of boardrooms around the world are saying, wait, we don't want to have all our eggs in one basket. We need to have some contingencies in place.Ron Efron: What if something happens again? What can we do? So due to that, you're seeing strategies where the supply chains are less centralized, in China, and it is a bit more thinking going on. On top of that, you also have their own domestic markets in Asia, also in high growth mode. So India obviously is the big, the bigger one, but Vietnam, the Philippines Indonesia, all of these are potential new markets as well for consumers, not only to manufacture, but also to sell.Ron Efron: And for example, with Apple. Not only are they starting to make phones in India, but they just opened their first Apple store in India. So if that trends continue, there'll be a lot more growth there as well. And that's also due to the government in India have changed some of their regulations around retail laws.Ron Efron: And they're a bit more pro business, or business friendly compared to the past. But the bottom line is for us, that just means more opportunities. Yeah. So companies are growing, building more facilities, building more factories around the region. And that's business that we like to help our customers with in terms of challenges.Ron Efron: It's what we know from the past that we know how to operate in Asia. So it's the normal challenges of building your capacity, hiring good people, making sure they know, how to do their job well and having all the infrastructure in place so that you can grow with your customers. The challenge that actually becomes a challenge.Ron Efron: And it's much harder than you think, like doing a project or simultaneously doing projects in Tokyo, Sydney, Jakarta, and in Bangalore is not that easy. And because you're dealing with very different environments, very different people and different challenges, but that's, No, that's what we know. And that's what we we're pretty good at actually.Art Dicker: I was going to say, that's probably, that's gotta be your advantage, right? That you can seamlessly work across different geographies like that. That's gotta be a selling point for you and a competitive advantage for you guys.Ron Efron: For sure. And then our largest competitor in this space is is my old company.Art Dicker: Yeah. So you've got, But, and I imagine too, you're also quite, you know, you're easy to open up in new markets and it's because you're, you're a private company, right? You're young in your DNA, right? You're experienced in your, in the management team, but as a company, you're young in your DNA.Art Dicker: So you're probably more, more nimble, right? I guess is what I should say.Ron Efron: I would hope so. And the fact that COVID started pretty much after, when we started our company, we were, even when we started, we had, we envisioned that would be more spread out and take advantage of the newer technologies at the time to be able to work across a region in a very efficient way.Ron Efron: And then COVID came, it just really forced that even faster upon everybody, but we were ready for that in some way. And that helped us. To even sharpen our skills further. So that we ended up coming out stronger from that. I think,Art Dicker: yeah, no, I can tell. And and I think the audits can tell just listening to you that, that, that.Art Dicker: That you're that's a challenge that's actually been good for your business and you've met that challenge. Oh, Ron if people listening in the audience want to reach out to you for maybe they have they're at a multinational company and they're looking, they're going to a new country like India, Indonesia, or one of these other markets that you're in, how is the best way for them to reach out to you, LinkedIn or another way or the website or, What's the best way?Ron Efron: Sure. Our company website is blueoceanssecurity.com. Blue is B L U, ocean security. And you can find my LinkedIn as well. And I'm sure you can add a email in your show notes. Yep,Art Dicker: absolutely. FeelRon Efron: free to reach out to me. It's funny, we just when we came up with our name today, when you're starting new companies or new domain names It's getting harder and harder.Ron Efron: Yeah. You have to drop valve. It does getArt Dicker: harder. Yeah. But I like it. It's a little more,Ron Efron: unique.Art Dicker: It's a little, it not edgy, but it's, it's a little more unique. But you have to be unique, as you said, to for these days. Registering company or a, or website. It's aRon Efron: bit.Ron Efron: It's a bit play on the words of that book, The Blue Origin Strategy, where we're trying to not work in a very competitive environment, but come up with products and services that, you we're not competing directly on with competitors. And that's part of the vision there.Art Dicker: Okay. Hey, Ron, it was a real treat to have you on and and I'm sure the audience will love listening to this.Art Dicker: It's a topic that I think is not talked about enough. And so that was definitely a reason why we had to do this episode. I thank you, want to thank you for joining us and I'm sure the audience got a lot out of this. Thanks Ron for coming on.Ron Efron: Thank you https://www.asiabusinesspod.com/

An alleged sinister hacking plot by China. CISA and the FBI issued a 'secure-by-design' alert. Ransomware hits municipalities in Florida and Texas. The EU sets regulations to safeguard the upcoming European Parliament elections. ReversingLabs describe a suspicious NuGet package. Senator Bill Cassidy questions a costly breach at HHS. A data center landlord sues over requests to reveal its customers. On our Industry Voices segment, Jason Kikta, CISO & Senior Vice President of Product at Automox, discusses ways to increase IT efficiency while avoiding tool overload & complexity. And Google's AI Throws Users a Malicious Bone. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest On our Industry Voices segment, Jason Kikta, CISO & Senior Vice President of Product at Automox, discusses ways to increase IT efficiency including automation & tool streamlining, IT automation/automated patching, and tool overload & complexity. You can learn more in Automox's 2024 State of IT Operations Research Report. Selected Reading Millions of Americans caught up in Chinese hacking plot (BBC) US Government Urges Software Makers to Eliminate SQL Injection Vulnerabilities (SecurityWeek) CISA adds FortiClient EMS, Ivanti EPM CSA, Nice Linear eMerge E3-Series bugs to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (Security Affairs) St. Cloud most recent in string of Florida cities hit with ransomware (The Record) Hackers demand $700K in ransomware attack on Tarrant Appraisal District (MSN) The impact of compromised backups on ransomware outcomes (Sophos News) EU sets rules for Big Tech to tackle interference in European Parliament elections (The Record) Suspicious NuGet package grabs data from industrial systems (ReversingLabs) Senator demands answers from HHS about $7.5 million cyber theft in 2023 (The Record) Data center landlord refuses Fairfax County demand for tenant information (Washington Business Journal) Google's AI-powered search feature recommends malicious sites, including scams and malware (TechSpot) Share your feedback. We want to ensure that you are getting the most out of the podcast. Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey as we continually work to improve the show.  Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at cyberwire@n2k.com to request more info. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © 2023 N2K Networks, Inc.

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. Our conversation covers Two-Six's analysis methodology for creating their biannual Media Manipulation Monitor (M3) report which chronicles China's efforts and presents strategies for achieving information advantage. Research Question: Becky and Hannah suggest an interested student examine how China's influence online compares to everything else that's influencing other people online. Because there's a lot of evidence that China is doing a lot online to influence people's minds, but not a lot of evidence that China has been successful except in a few cases and in a few countries. Resources: Cognitive Crucible Podcast Episodes Mentioned #144 Nick Eberstadt on Demographics Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era: Reassessing Collective Leadership by Cheng Li Middle Class Shanghai: Reshaping U.S.-China Engagement by Cheng Li  Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall by Dr. Molly Roberts Intelligence Matters podcast: Chinese Cognitive Warfare Link to full show notes and resources Guest Bio:  Becky Fair is the Vice President of Information Advantage at Two Six Technologies. She spent a decade as a CIA officer in a variety of roles and brings a deep understanding of the national security community mission sets. She was the CEO and co-founder of Thresher, a software company acquired by Two Six Technologies, that uses unique data sets and machine learning to help decision makers in government and industry detect and measure information operations. She started her career working in Russia at the International Finance Corporation, a division of the World Bank. Hannah Lincoln is the Analysis Lead for the M3 team at Two Six Technologies. She spent a decade in China during its late economic boom years (2008-2018), where she worked in consumer research for a variety of multinational companies. Research on Chinese consumers was a natural segue into China intelligence analysis. Ms. Lincoln moved back to the US in 2018 and switched to OSINT analysis with a focus on Chinese censorship, propaganda, and disinformation at Thresher, now part of Two Six Technologies.  About: The Information Professionals Association (IPA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the role of information activities, such as influence and cognitive security, within the national security sector and helping to bridge the divide between operations and research. Its goal is to increase interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars and practitioners and policymakers with an interest in this domain. For more information, please contact us at communications@information-professionals.org. Or, connect directly with The Cognitive Crucible podcast host, John Bicknell, on LinkedIn. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, 1) IPA earns from qualifying purchases, 2) IPA gets commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Dr. Andrew W. MacDonald, Assistant Professor of Social Science at Duke Kunshan University, shares research from his new book Directed Digital Dissidence in Autocracies: How China Wins Online. We discuss the Chinese digital and social media context, citizens' perceptions of online propaganda, and how the state manipulates digital information to further its political interests. We also discuss survey methodology, how citizens circumvent the Great Firewall, and what affect using the internet and VPNs has on trust in the state. 

Ein Nerd aus China will das Internet retten - und erreicht genau das Gegenteil. Er wird Teil eines Projekts, das Chinas Internet vom Rest der Welt abschottet: die Great Firewall.Eine neue Folge Wild Wild Web gibt es jeden Donnerstag in der ARD Audiothek. Wir freuen uns über Feedback an wildwildweb@br.de.Zum KI-Podcast der ARD geht es hier: https://1.ard.de/wildwildweb3-kipodcast

Die Great Firewall steht. Hinter ihr wird Chinas Internet zu einer Parallelwelt aus Zensur und Überwachung. Nur für Wei bekommt diese Welt plötzlich Risse. Was machst du mitder Wahrheit, wenn du der Einzige bist, der sie kennt?

Ein Nerd aus China will das Internet retten - und erreicht genau das Gegenteil. Er wird Teil eines Projekts, das Chinas Internet vom Rest der Welt abschottet: die Great Firewall.

On the most recent episode of TPI's podcast "Two Think Minimum," Dr. Meicen Sun, assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign joined TPI's Scott Wallsten to discuss her research on the effects of a country's decision to control international internet traffic. She finds that China's Great Firewall has helped increase profits of Chinese firms, but at the cost of reducing research quality as scientific collaboration and connections wither. This result presents a dilemma for autocrats if they try to balance short-term and long-term effects.

Ein Nerd aus China will das Internet retten - und erreicht genau das Gegenteil. Er wird Teil eines Projekts, das Chinas Internet vom Rest der Welt abschottet: die Great Firewall. Hinter ihr wird Chinas Internet zu einer Parallelwelt aus Zensur und Überwachung. Aber dann bekommt diese Welt für den überzeugten Unterstützer der chinesischen Regierung plötzlich Risse.

In dieser Hintergrundfolge geht es um die Geheimdienste Israels. Wir versuchen zu erklären, warum sie am 7. Oktober 2023 überrascht waren – und was sie so besonders macht. Im Gespräch mit dem ARD-Geheimdienstexperten Holger Schmidt klärt Eva-Maria Lemke unter anderem, was in der Vergangenheit schiefgelaufen ist, was “nasse Jobs” sind und wie die Dienste Mossad, Aman und Schin Bet arbeiten. Wenn ihr mehr darüber wissen möchtet, hört auch in die begleitende Folge “Das Versagen der Dienste und der entführte Soldat”. Und noch ein Tipp zum Weiterhören: Im Podcast “Wild Wild Web” nehmen euch die beiden Hosts mit zum Headquarter von Spotify und hinter die Great Firewall und sie sagen euch, was eure Lieblings-Memes über euch verraten.

Some 200 million under-18s use the internet in China, and at least 24 million of them are considered addicts. In the coming months, Beijing will block their internet access from 10pm to 6am. The amount of time they can spend online each day will also be limited, according to their age. With China already cut off from the World Wide Web due to the "Great Firewall", authorities are increasingly cracking down on screen time for children and sometimes resorting to brutal methods. Our correspondents report from Shanghai.

This podcast is a commentary and does not contain any copyrighted material of the reference source. We strongly recommend accessing/buying the reference source at the same time. ■Reference Source https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_anti_behind_the_great_firewall_of_china ■Post on this topic (You can get FREE learning materials!) https://englist.me/141-academic-words-reference-from-michael-anti-behind-the-great-firewall-of-china-ted-talk/ ■Youtube Video https://youtu.be/8QlOE0qi-qc (All Words) https://youtu.be/Syxf_-liCtw (Advanced Words) https://youtu.be/U28nCLfKYI4 (Quick Look) ■Top Page for Further Materials https://englist.me/ ■SNS (Please follow!)

In this episode, Patrick and I talk about the great firewall of China (as per the title), analog Tinder, being entrepreneurial in a communist country, Google Maps getting people lost, 3D printed pills, cheeky sat-nav and my aversion to horror films.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's the last show of the month, which means it is time for a roundtable! Today we are discussing three news stories, including Amazon's Sidewalk Labs, a court case in California involving Cisco and the Great Firewall of China, and yet another data breach.

Topics for this week: Tik Tok Ban In Montanta Modern Mayhem, Content Moderator Simulator 1Password Supports Passkey With Tool For Developers/Websites Hacked Prius Running on MUNI Power Lines?? Guests: Jeff Gamet, Ben […]

Topics for this week: Tik Tok Ban In Montanta Modern Mayhem, Content Moderator Simulator 1Password Supports Passkey With Tool For Developers/Websites Hacked Prius Running on MUNI Power Lines?? Guests: Jeff Gamet, Ben […]

Some members of Congress appear to want to choke off all manner of innovation enabled by cryptocurrencies, and doing so would require a great deal more intrusive government. Jack Solowey explains. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paris Marx is joined by Louise Matsakis to discuss the growing divide between the US and China, the long history of Western concern about the East, and why we should pay attention to who these anti-China narratives benefit.Louise Matsakis is a technology reporter at Semafor who previously worked at NBC News, Rest of World, and Wired. You can follow her on Twitter at @lmatsakis.Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, support the show on Patreon, and sign up for the weekly newsletter.The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.Also mentioned in this episode:Please participate in our listener survey this month to give us a better idea of what you think of the show: https://forms.gle/xayiT7DQJn56p62x7Louise wrote about YouTube videos predicting China's collapse, the rise of Shein, and the prospect of TikTok bans.Many US states are banning TikTok from government-issued devices.In 2000, Bill Clinton said that trying to place restrictions on the internet was like trying to nail Jello to a wall. China proved him wrong.India has already banned TikTok and a number of other Chinese apps.Speakers of the Khmer language in Cambodia used voice chat on Messenger because keyboards weren't designed to work with their language.Shein is taking off in Mexico.Support the show

Elon Musk, Twitter, Tesla, ultrasonic, autonomous, self-driving, China, Great Firewall of China, TLS, nuclear fusion, social media, depression, critical thinking, Activizion Blizzard, Blizzard, Overwatch 2, quantum computing, Intel, Uber, Amazon, unionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.