help me
[Music]
yes awesome right down here up front see
the best people know that uh in this
talk we give free upgrades to First
Class unlike the airplane getting here
so if anybody wants to to jump up front
it won't be disruptive I promise you'll
get a much better view of this bright
orange sweater that I'm wearing
and be able to hear the rasp in my voice
as I overcome my uh my cold that that
had me down for about a week
I'm excited to see a bunch of people
here first thing in the morning or what
passes for first thing in the morning at
a hacker conference it's great that that
I'm up first and it's 10 a.m gave me a
nice opportunity to sleep in and get
here
um
how many people by show hands recognize
the illusion that's made in the title of
the talk
no oh a couple of people good so for
those who don't know
see my clicker works yeah this is a
William Gibson quote said the future is
here it just isn't very evenly
distributed William Gibson of course was
one of the foundational cyberpunk
writers I think you know he's been the
the term cyberpunk has been attributed
to a bunch of people he is one of them I
don't know who originally came up with
it
um but when I was putting this talk
together I wanted to do something that
was really fun and exciting and I
realized that this totally can be this
is such a fun topic to talk about
because I think we can all relate to it
um
and I think we don't realize the degree
to which we actually are living the
cyberpunk future or it's available to
those who seek it out
and that is great in some ways it's also
maybe not so good in some other
important ways and I want to talk a
little bit about that today
so first here's what my morning looked
like my term woke me up
I got caffeine in the form of coffee
pre-measured is great for my stems
and then my term called a ride to get me
to the airport to come here
when I was getting on the plane I put my
phone phones into blocking mode so it
would knock out all the distractions
nobody could talk to me you know that
annoying seat mate that always wants to
like banter about work and sell you
something
um I checked my crypto credits when I
was on the plane or waiting to board the
plane
they were down kind of sucks oh well
um I guess I'll uh I'll have to work and
get some more
then
um I jacked in to the net got some
videos downloaded them pulled them onto
my term
uh and then hopped on the plane
luckily my vax code passed and my Mac
mask check cleared so I was able to get
here
and now I'm presented to you on my cyber
deck
so
this is the cyberpunk future that we
actually have that we're living today
and we're just not looking at it in that
way it's kind of cool to think about 20
or 30 years ago what we would have
thought about the life that we're living
today and not only that where it's going
from here
but uh
I have a confession this is not actually
going to be a talk about security at a
security conference
this is going to be a talk about
Humanity The Human Condition about us as
individuals and as a society
and some of the implications of not just
security but the technology decisions
the technology drivers that we're making
every single day as we create the
cyberpunk future right before our eyes
at 10 o'clock in the morning heavy stuff
this is going to be a deep talk you're
going to walk away from here with the
thought-provoking Emoji but not one of
the new ones that just got pushed out I
don't know if anybody downloaded those
uh emojis probably drive more security
adoption than anything else because
Apple and Google always roll the
security into the Emoji updates just FYI
in case you wonder why your emojis are
delayed so that they can get a security
updated
um
I this is my about me slide because
anytime somebody's up in front of you
you should always ask who the heck is
this person and why should I pay
attention to anything that they say
um I've been around I've done a bunch of
stuff I'm not going to belabor it but
I've been doing security for uh 20 plus
years as a professional and before that
many many years as an amateur making a
lot of mistakes on my own and other
people's computers unfortunately
fortunately the statute of limitations
is expired on all of those so I can talk
about them
but I do a bunch of stuff I used to work
on computers now my favorite hacking
tools or PowerPoint Excel and Microsoft
Word because it turns out if you can get
root in the c-suite then all the other
layers will take care of themselves
um I run a small consulting firm and
have for about the last decade and
recently last five or six years I've
gotten much more into trying to hack
public policy so we have better laws and
better protections for everyone as well
as avoiding making dumb laws which is
you know part of the problem as well
anybody recognize this it's been a
couple years since this was front page
news
this is the blue origin shuttle
this is the I think this was the Jeff
Bezos one where uh he's like I'm going
to go into space I'm going to be the
first space tourist and like Richard
Branson beat him to it and Elon Musk
famously said yeah I'm going to die in
space I sent my car up there to like
drive around in orbit or I don't know
what he's doing with that thing
um
but a lot of people look at this and
they see oh this is just a bunch of
billionaires boosting their egos trying
to be the first trying to to prove that
they're cooler than all the other kids
on the playground and it is that
but I look at this and I see so much
more than that I see promise for
Humanity I see first movers that are
going to radically transform things you
know famously
um people ask like is it better to be a
king in the 1800s or a peasant today and
people can say well today peasants have
things that the kings in the 1800s could
not even conceive of right we've got all
of these these cool Technologies and
that's true it's also true that peasants
get treated like dirt
um
and those are the types of Technology
choices that I think we need to be
considering
I look back on this 1961 speech
that JFK gave if you're not familiar
with it it's really really inspiring
it inspired a generation of physicists
of Engineers
mathematicians of cyberpunk writers
right if you grew up in the 60s and 70s
you watched
the future you watched all the Sci-Fi
that you were reading about come to life
right before your eyes it must have been
absolutely astounding to watch these
things happen in real time
um we had to take the physics that we
knew to the very limit
we had to build new engineering
practices around this we had to innovate
new manufacturing we got Tang from the
space program and who didn't grow up
with tang
we got all these amazing new things
these amazing new technologies and we
did it not so a single person could go
and do something but as they say For All
Mankind to push Humanity forward and it
said that when some of the first people
were kind of traversing the world back
in the 70s 80s 90s and running into
these these tribes and cultures that
have been cut off for tens of years or
that had opted out of more
technologically advanced Society they
would ask hey I heard we went to the
moon in the 1960s what have we done
since then it's like oh man I don't know
that's a good question
soon we're going to be doing asteroid
mining there's already Trials of this
and it's kind of incredible to think
about
um one of the the fundamental I think
sci-fi Concepts is this idea of the
kardashev scale of energy use you can
measure a civilization's advancement by
What proportion of their planet
their solar system and their Galaxy
they're able to take advantage of this
is kind of cool at level one you're
basically harvesting everything that the
planet has to give you at level two
you're going and getting bigger you're
uh there's a concept of something called
a Dyson Sphere where you build an energy
capture unit around the star that you
orbit and siphon all the energy out of
it and then there's also a concept of
basically harnessing the energy of a
black hole at the center of a Galaxy
which is absolutely amazing
and so for if we're going to get to
those things we have to do some of this
stuff we have to do asteroid mining we
have to be able to uh to utilize
efficiently all the energy that our
planet can give us
um and so if anybody is going to be in
here for sick codes talk and after mine
he's talking about harnessing the energy
of the solar system of our sun of our
star which is one step on the pathway to
getting to these
incredibly Advanced
um
uh technological achievements
one of the things that always really
fascinated me about cyberpunk is this
ability to like travel through space
the low earth orbit kind of thing
Hypersonic travel where you hop on a
plane in New York and you wake up uh or
you step off in Tokyo and it's like four
hours later that's astounding it's
mind-boggling and partly it's a
literature Trope
um because you have to get people from
one place to another physically in a
book really quickly but partly it's
possible this is a commercializable
vehicle that's being built out by the
European Union right now where it's
going to take a hundred passengers a
couple hundred passengers on a
Hypersonic flight a couple hours to get
to London that seems cool you can pop
over and pop back for tea in the same
amount of time it would take you to get
down to Chicago through traffic that's
astounding to me
and if we go back and think about
what it was like to travel just by air
earlier on in the century the last
century
in 1941 going Boston to Los Angeles
transcontinental
was grueling
I don't know that there's anybody here
that would want to pay 4 500 bucks to
spend 15 hours on a plane in stale air
and they allowed smoking on the planes
back then it must have been awful
I can't imagine uh enjoying doing that
wanting to do that whereas today like
six hours you know 70 years later six
hours it's non-stop 450 bucks so cost
dropped by an order of magnitude the
amount of time was cut in a third and
it's much nicer and more convenient
even if you're in cattle class and you
know you're you're squished into a
middle row seat it's only for six hours
in comparison to 15 hours that it used
to be and this is the kind of capability
that comes as these things develop so
again spaceships
absolutely amazing space tourism that
concept and right now it's just a bunch
of rich people doing it to show off to
their friends but very very soon within
a lifetime it's going to be a tenth the
cost or less
it's going to be much faster much more
convenient much safer
um and all of the things that uh this
this kind of advancement gives us
augmented reality is a reality so I
remember reading like snow crash and a
lot of these other classic cyberpunk
books
and it always like I was floored I was
like oh man I wish I could like run
around and in this cyber space uh and go
to these virtual stores and hang out in
like virtual parks and talk to people
that are around the world
um and it's becoming a reality like this
is a a video about the the Apple version
that's coming out potentially to be
announced in June we will see but
there's a lot of Technology already on
the market for this uh and has been for
a while but it's getting so good that
it's practical to have one I remember at
the beginning of the pandemic
somebody did a uh a virtual conference
it was super cool like uh you put your
VR headset on you're like bouncing
around jumping up and down and going to
the rafters to watch talks it was really
really wild and it was a fun experience
um that was something super different
but that we're gradually getting more
and more accustomed to anybody in here
have a VR deck
yeah a bunch of hands actually that's
cool I'm excited about this
and uh I've spent a lot of my my time
working in healthcare one of my first
jobs in security was in healthcare
uh and so I'm really really passionate
about it and I look around right now and
I see so many things happening in
healthcare it's absolutely amazing it's
astounding some of the breakthroughs
some of the revolutions that we're
seeing
um and I'll go through a few of these
that are uh give me a lot of Hope there
are things that were in cyberpunk that
I'll bet even the writers thought like
oh this is a couple hundred years out
and here we are a couple of decades on
and we're doing these things
so
uh you can regrow tissue in a lab
there's something called a bioreactor
and Dean Cayman who
famously came up with the the Segway
that wasn't so awesome but also a lot of
people don't realize this he came up
with the first insulin pumps as well
um
he's now testing how to grow tissues
in bioreactors
how to grow new parts of your body so
for people who may have lost an ear or
may have some other type of condition
and want to change that
they can do it very soon you'll be able
to use your own
genes to regrow a part of your body or
grow a part of your body
that
um
will replace what you've lost or will
augment it potentially you know if you
want to have Vulcan ears or elf ears
like we're not super far off from being
able to do that in a way that's not just
plastic surgery that's actually your own
tissues
it's kind of wild
this is a video from several years ago
this is an autonomous surgical robot
this robot is if you watch the full
video it actually takes a grape that's
what's being cut open there it slices
off its skin really delicately and
carefully
peels it back and then sutures it back
on
this is amazing think about what this
will mean for people who may not have
great access to health care if they're
able to get to one of these much less
expensive surgical robots then they can
have life-saving procedures done without
being proximal to one of the world's
best surgeons
it also means that scarring will go down
you know if you have some type of a
traumatic incident you can reduce the
the scarring that you have like these
types of procedures
um they're really just ripped from uh
from cyberpunk ripped from sci-fi and
it's super cool to see
any uh well I don't want to ask people
what they're if they've got lactose
intolerance
fortunately I don't but there's a lot of
people who do and there's a
a new way to do gene therapy that's it's
been around for I don't know 20 or 30
years in theory but some of the
biohackers out there are turning this
into practice
they're creating kits and instructions
so that you can basically
insert
the genetic material for making the
proteins that you need and the the thing
that helps you digest lactose is a is a
protein
um put it into viruses that will infect
your cells with this and then you put it
into a pill and you swallow a pill and
so this uh if you go check out this
video it's a guy who did this a couple
of years before
he made this pill swallowed it and
essentially the virus has attacked his
stomach lining and injected the encoding
for this specific protein and so for two
years he's been able to eat ice cream
he's been able to eat cheese been able
to eat yogurt to drink milk
and it's absolutely amazing if you think
about what this could mean for other
conditions for diabetes for anything
where
we have something going on in our genes
that we're not making a protein and
we're making too much of a protein or
the wrong kind of a protein
and he's just like doing this in his
garage for a hundred bucks
that's astounding to me I I just can't
believe it
any home Brewers here Brewer and beer
nice I would expect no less in Milwaukee
well
brewing beer is cool it's a bacteria
you put a bacteria into a sugar solution
and it makes something that humans find
useful it transforms that sugar into a
different substance into something that
we find useful we find it debilitating
sometimes as well but we find it
generally useful
what if you could do that with anything
else that you've got so instead of if
you didn't want to change your your
genes if you wanted to do something
slightly different and just make the
thing that you need
what about insulin
now for those who don't know the history
of insulin and the history of diabetes
if you go back 100 years
insulin was a diabetes was a fatal
disease
kids would get it and the only way to
treat it is a calorie restricted diet
and so there's stories about these Wards
of kids that are just emaciated and like
if they eat too much they're going to
die and if they don't eat enough they're
going to die so like what's the
treatment there and the story is uh Eli
Lilly the um the chemist
figured out a way to synthesize insulin
and so he went around to one of these
wards
where all the kids are just in there and
they're emaciated
and there's basically not much hope for
them and he started treating them with
insulin uh just going in and giving each
of them a shot of this synthetic insulin
product that he had made and tested and
by the time he got to the last kid in
the ward the first one was up and
walking around and like excited
um and then eventually all of them so
this is how that type of Technology can
absolutely be transformative
uh
and you can now make this in your home
you can get a kit and turn it into
insulin especially at a time when things
like commercially available insulin here
in the US is prohibitedly expensive for
some people where
epipens which can save your life if
you're having a anaphylactic shock
response
can now be made for 30 bucks instead of
300 bucks with something called the
epipencle
this is all just fascinating
democratization of science to be able to
take something that a hundred years ago
was like literally the Breakthrough
scientific revolution of its era and now
like we can just do it if we want to on
a weekend like that's amazing
but
in addition to this bright future the
one that we all dream about
having our dystopian cyberpunk Futures
also here
and this is the part that really scares
me this is the part that that has the
security implications that I want you to
think about but also has the broader
implications the human security the
human safety
um the
uh
the ability to transform our society in
in harmful ways and the things the parts
of the cyberpunk novels that we hate
that the the protagonist always Rebels
against and is trying to stop
we also have those today
so like I mentioned we've got many
concurrent Revolutions in healthcare
these depend on a few things
they depend on artificial intelligence
they depend on data storage
they depend on software software code
they depend on connectivity
and this conference is all about how we
can undermine those things how it's
relatively simple to undermine those
things
about how
um
we can't necessarily trust the code that
goes into our cars into our bodies if we
have an implanted device into our
airplanes that fly us
how being connected to the internet
exposes us to seven billion people
statistically some percentage of which
are sociopaths
and we don't have a good way to build
the security in to where it can assure
that safety that reliability that
trustworthiness
so let me give you a couple of examples
and I'll stick to Health Care for right
now
brain implants are absolutely amazing
they can
help treat epilepsy
PTSD depression
arthritis there's a number of things
that these deep brain stimulators
can help treat
um
but they can also modify your brain the
way it works
and in talking with a physician
told me that
he was having a problem with a kid who
was
not responding or would show like
evidence of the the implant going crazy
at certain times
and after working with him for months he
figured out that the kid had had learned
how to adapt it to get himself High
so now the thing that you put in in your
body for correcting for as a therapy for
something that you have a problem with
that's it's causing you harm in your
life is now being used for elective
reasons as well just to like I don't
know have fun because you're bored on a
Saturday
um wouldn't be the way I would go and
and get that kick but
that's the kind of thing that we're
going to be dealing with really really
soon that we're already seeing evidence
of and already dealing with
um I've got another friend who's a
physician in London and a patient came
in
with what appeared to be
symptoms of an underlying condition for
which they had an implant given to them
and you know their best guess was
despite all the treatment they had given
this patient the disease was just
overtaking them too fast
uh
but this physician was like you know I
wonder if there's something going on
with that brain stimulator
so she reset it and all the problems
went away turns out
the brain stimulator was doing something
funky that was replicating uh the the
type of condition that this patient had
the underlying condition and so it was
indistinguishable from the physiology
was indistinguishable from the problem
with the medical device and so that
started her wondering was this a hack
did somebody hack that
was it unintended did something happen
was it like the batteries are just
getting low
so this is starting to raise a lot of
questions uh in in Physicians Minds
around the world
this is a an actress she was in
um
Hunger Games and in Hunger Games she
plays an Archer she's actually an archer
in real life
which is really cool because she has a
prosthetic limb
she was born with a condition where part
of her arm just wasn't there
and so she's got this this cool
prosthetic
um
recently she was traveling and she had
an issue with it
it died the battery died and she
couldn't get to a USB port to charge it
um so she's in an airport looking for a
plug to charge her arm so it would keep
working like that's kind of weird for me
to think about for her that's her
everyday reality
uh
and it's connected to Bluetooth so she
can go in and blue with Bluetooth and
see the status what's the battery look
like are there any potential issues
coming up with it do I need to take it
in for service
I said that's really cool are you afraid
that people are going to hack it she's
like oh yeah that would be catastrophic
I would hate it like I think about that
all the time and it really scares me I
said well you should come out to Defcon
and we'll like help you figure stuff out
she said oh no I would never go to
Defcon like there's places I just can't
go because I can't trust the environment
and if this thing started just flailing
around it can hurt me it could hurt
someone it could damage the thing
um said well what happens if it if it
gets broken it's like oh it's it's
actually uh
really not an easy process
even if it's something simple I can't
fix it myself I have to send it to the
manufacturer
I can't look at the software code that's
in it I can't update that you know I
can't go to like the equivalent of a
digital gym
like we'll but that means you you feel
like you don't own
a part of your body
isn't that weird you're like licensing
your your body
she's like yeah it's a really weird
thing and so a couple years ago a lawyer
named Andrea matusian wrote a legal
paper very well researched very well
cited it's really really thick if you or
a lawyer I encourage you to go check it
out if you're not it might be a little
bit dense it's too dense for me but she
called it the internet of bodies you
know what happens when we all become
connected to the internet
and these are the types of things we
need to start thinking about now not
just for the legal Frameworks you know
is it legal for someone to license part
of my body to me rather than uh me
owning it
um but also the the societal ethical
things that we need to start thinking
about how we treat these technologies
that Keep Us Alive
she also wrote a Wall Street Journal
piece which is a lot easier to digest so
if you're interested in that go check it
out
and then this was cool
um this is a
a woman named Poppy crumb and she gave a
talk
called the end of the poker face
Lady Gaga was all a rage and so it was a
a really good talk title
and the the idea was
through just observing
um
the
chemistry of your breath
the levels of CO2 you have in your
exhales
the
thermal sensors or the thermal patterns
on your face and in your body
through your breathing rate through your
heart rate through these things that are
observable across a room
um you can tell when someone's lying
so she asked a question
what happens
if you can no longer lie to anybody else
what does that do to us as people like
this is such a weird concept
we lie a lot we don't realize that we're
lying but we lie a lot every single day
little ones you know they don't matter
much
um things like how are you doing oh I'm
great you're not great there's something
going on in your life that you just
don't want to talk about
the lives make it easier for us so what
happens when we can no longer tell those
because somebody can say like I know
you're not great
and there's other types of lies that are
much much bigger I live in Washington DC
that joke has its own punch line
I tell you the thing that worries me
though is what happens if we can no
longer lie to ourselves
if we could no longer convince ourselves
yeah I'm doing great I'm fine
if we have to address these things if we
have to confront them
that I think is going to be the thing
that really changes us on an individual
as well as societal level and maybe this
technology never gets widely adopted
because it creeps too many people out
but it's here like it is here today
literally you can there's a famous study
where just by listening to someone talk
and artificial intelligence
has like an 80 accuracy rate of
diagnosing someone with getting
Parkinson's in their future
it's wild
I don't know that I would even want to
know that
but somebody's going to know it how are
they going to use that what if it's your
insurance company they drop you you no
longer have insurance what if it's your
employer
they say yeah we don't really want this
person around they're not going to be
productive when they're in their 40s and
50s so we're not going to invest in them
anymore after a certain age
these are the types of things that we
really have to start thinking about and
dealing with this is the dystopian part
of the cyberpunk future that we're
already living in
and the consequences of failure here are
really really high
raise your hand if you think that we've
got it figured out how to do security
for a single computer or for a small
network of computers
that are running you know well
understood operating systems well
understood Paradise raise your hand if
you think that oh one hand a brave
person I won't put you on the spot and
ask you uh
um
when it's relatively simply simple
and we can't get it right what happens
when we make it exponentially more
complex
we've got to start doing better now
we've got to start working harder now I
know a lot of the people in this room
have already been doing that for years
or even decades
but we've got to
we've got to be more successful at it
we've got to try different things if we
want to see different outcomes we've got
to do things like influence public
policy like go and build stuff instead
of just breaking stuff we've got to
change it up so that our future can be
the future that we want to see
um so
uh you know this person but you don't
know that you know them shame is a pen
born in Cork Ireland 1978
he's got a degree in mathematics from
Trinity College Dublin PhD in AI
from MIT in Boston
you may not know him but you've probably
heard of the company that he created
it's called open AI anybody heard of
open AI
oh
okay kind of a funny joke
um but I dropped in to chat GPT a
statement uh generate a biography for
Sheamus open
an AI creator
and it came back with this thing that
was very heavily uh
kind of skewed towards somebody who was
born in Ireland grew up in Ireland
now I didn't tell chat GPT that this was
an Irish person
I didn't tell chat GPT that this was a
man
I didn't tell chat GPT any of these
things it's only queuing off of the name
Sheamus opin
now this is kind of a funny bias in AI
but it's still a bias right
the artificial intelligence told me
something based on some kind of a
heuristic and a best guess a probability
and it looks really plausible like you
can read through the bio and think yep
that that matches all the things that I
would expect from somebody named Sheamus
open
um but what happens when it's not so
funny
when things that come out of artificial
intelligence
can absolutely change
the way that we think about
policing for instance
the amount of assurance or guarantee
that we put that that person is who they
say they are
that that these things are used in
decision making for hiring for loans for
uh where you're able to live for any of
these other things and I just did a very
very quick search on AI bias and this is
one of the first articles that came up
that said bias for light-skinned males
is 0.8
bias for dark-skinned females is 34.7
I don't know what those numbers signify
but I know that that's a huge difference
right why because AI is being trained on
old white dudes like me like
is that the world we want of the future
just a bunch of old white dudes I hope
not I don't want it that would be really
boring for me and for everybody
but it's these types of uh willful
ignorance or unconscious steps that we
may take that limit things like AI to
create a future based on what we program
it to do even unintentionally or just by
neglect
and I'll go back to uh to our three old
white dudes here
um
they're pioneering in space and like I
said right now it's for them
but eventually it will be for the people
who uh
are the beneficiaries of this Downstream
work
um if we're systemically
disenfranchising people who don't look
like them
then we're going to get a world in which
it's just inevitable that it's going to
be favoring an advantage advantaging
people like them
Sheryl Sandberg the I think she's CEO of
Facebook said hey if you're offered a
seat on a rocket ship you don't ask what
see you just get on
and like that's true to some degree
right I mean again going back to the
peasant of today versus the the Regent
of the 1800s like hey there's amazing
Healthcare available you're going to
take advantage of it because it's so
much better than what you can get or
what you could get before
but what if this is the seat that you've
got on the rocket you're like shoveling
coal into the burners to you know I I
imagine that some of these rocket ships
probably don't use coal but you know
there's an equivalent of it what's the
equivalent of shoveling coal on Facebook
I don't know being weaponized against
democracy like that seems like a bad
trade-off like I don't want to be on
that ship I don't want to have that seat
on that ship
but as Society with things like Facebook
with things like algorithms dictating
what we view on these platforms how we
consume our news how we see the world
around us increasingly we're all on this
rocket ship whether we want to be or not
it's not a matter of what seat you have
or what seat you choose it's a matter of
where you get put and right now most of
us are being put into this coal
shoveling seat we're driving the engines
that run it for the benefit of others
um
Gil Scott-Heron has an absolutely
amazing spoken word beat poetry
speech from the 1970 I think it was just
after we had landed on the moon
and he's talking about how he walks down
the street in his neighborhood and he
sees people addicted to drugs they can't
get medical care he sees
parents who can't afford to house
themselves and their kids
he's like
you know there are people on the moon
right now and I can't figure out how to
get basic necessities I'm at the bottom
of Maslow's hierarchy I'm much worse off
than like a hunter-gatherer and there's
people walking on the moon the amount of
inequity here is just absolutely insane
and he's right and this is what uh this
looks like today this is what our
dystopia looks like
we've got to change that we've got to be
better
so how do we evenly distribute
the cyberpunk future and how do we make
it one that we want to see
well we're going to go back to ancient
Greece we're going to forget all this
modern technology we're going to go back
to the time of you know the wheel was a
brand new invention
um
western civilization was starting we
were coming up with the ideas for
democracy everybody was putting their
Rock inside the bucket of the the person
that they wanted to vote for it's a
really exciting time in life anybody
here speak ancient Greek I don't
what's it say
pronounce it
let's say in
kubernetes if it doesn't say kubernetes
it's supposed to
[Music]
I may have fat fingered the
game okay so yeah this is um kubernetes
which is the basics for the word
cybernetics cybernetics was coined in I
believe the 1940s by Dr Norbert weiner
and it was meant to be the manned
machine system
kubernetes means the person at the wheel
on the boat and the boat itself
it is the integration the synthesis of
technology and Humanity this has been
built into our profession since the
outset
but how many people today think about
cyber security
as people end technology
versus just technology I don't need to
show hands in the room
um but in our day-to-day interactions
probably most of the people that we talk
to think oh cyber that means computer
and it's over there in the closet so
just you'll be over there and we'll be
out here doing the the other things in
the organization
um
and it's also
the root of the word governance
which is political systems it's the
public policies that we make it's the
way that we decide as a society what we
want to favor what we want to avoid
we're all wrapped up in that we didn't
even know it
so I want us to get back to that I want
us to remember the roots of where we
came from
to remember that we are part of
something much broader
to remember that we have the power to
decide where we go on this ship we can
plot our course
and I want to
make sure that we steer towards the
future we want
versus letting the winds just
laissez-faire blow where they will
and I want to try and inspire you over
the next couple of minutes to build not
just to break things to become a part of
creating something and then instill in
that the values that you want to see in
your cyberpunk future to make it
available for everyone to ease the
access to ensure its security its safety
its reliability
to draw on the known physics of software
of networking of cyber security
to creatively apply that new engineering
because if we want to do this we have to
get into space
it's not a matter of if it's just a
matter of when we have to get into space
we have to improve health care we have
to apply new technologies to health care
we can't say well we got to wait for it
to to become safe well there's people
dying today what do you say to those
people sorry uh you know the security
wasn't good enough for my personal
standard therefore you're going to be
denied this health care we have to adopt
Advanced artificial intelligence we have
to figure out a way to make it work it's
not enough to sit on the sidelines and
say we shouldn't do it or they should
have done it differently or to second
guess we've got to get in there
so when you're thinking about what
you're going to do next
whether it's walking out this door after
sick codes talk whether it's your next
career move no matter what it is think
about is this the right challenge am I
going to the direction to the place
where I really want to be going to drive
the future that I want to see
I founded the Aerospace Village at
Defcon
um formerly the aviation Village and our
motto our mission statement is build
Inspire promote
so for the things that you're doing does
it Inspire and a Shameless plug here
we've got the hack a sack coming up
really really soon I think some of the
qualifications have already started so
go check that out and sign up for it get
involved because that is really cool
um
there's satellites in orbit that you'll
be hacking like literally in orbit
that's really cool
how can this scale down
we always talk about scaling things up
how do we you know
exponentially like 10x this 100x this
but can the thing you're doing work for
a small business
can it work for an individual
can it work for somebody who's not
technologically advanced how do we
ensure that this is democratized that
it's evenly distributed
what does it mean
there are some things that are more
important than technology
we are more important than technology
how are you building it for people to
make their lives better or is it just
like a fancy new widget uh you know the
new Flappy Birds or or whatever does it
really do something if you're thinking
about this in security context
if you're doing security research start
with
what is the problem how does this impact
people and then find the bugs because I
guarantee you you'll find the bugs
instead of starting with let me find a
cool bug and then try and tie it to
something that matters start on the
other side of that
when you're looking at what you're going
to do next how does it serve who does it
serve
could be going in and talking with some
of the local policy makers or national
policy makers helping them understand
the consequences of some of the
decisions that they make helping shape
that and having talked to a bunch of
policy makers myself at both the state
local as well as Federal level like they
all want to learn they all want to get
better
if they don't have the time then their
staffers certainly do that's what
they're paid for and in fact a lot of
them are really really want to hear from
independent Security Experts because all
they get is the talking points from the
Chamber of Commerce or from you know the
government Affairs government relations
person at whatever company it happens to
be located in their District
think about
Healthcare and medicine again
for something like what we're talking
about here I personally am really really
the most enthusiastic as well as the
most troubled by Healthcare and I think
that that's where they need the most
help the 2017 HHS task force on cyber
security
in healthcare Across the Nation
said that 75 percent of Health Care
Providers lack a single qualified
security professional
how are you going to secure a hospital
if you don't have any people who know
how to do security to begin with
that's tough
I worked in a hospital I know how
difficult it is even when you do have
talented security people well-qualified
security people
then what can this build
people do amazing things with platforms
when they're given access to them
who's going to build on top of it is
this something that can be accessible to
non-technical people can it be
accessible to Civil Society
organizations can it be accessible to
folks who are going to use it for
something you never intended but that
serves a purpose in their Community
whatever community that happens to be
whether it's physical or community of
Interest like the hacker Community or
whatever
and I think the consequences are if we
don't do this if we don't get it right
then the ship we're piloting will just
be torn apart
1968 Stuart brand said we are as gods
and we might as well get good at it now
Stuart brand was a famous
environmentalist he helped found the
Sierra Club uh back in the 60s the whole
earth catalog
but he was also at the very first
hackers conference and if you've heard
the the phrase information wants to be
free
that was Stuart Brandt
so he was there at the beginning of the
technology Revolution the computer
Revolution as well
I might change that slightly
we must get good at it
it's not enough to not be good at it
we've got to be able to make the types
of decisions we need to make to uh to be
a little bit better
to be more deliberate more thoughtful
about the types of Technology we're
creating
and finally
I want to just remind you that the
Cavalry isn't coming we are what it is
it falls to us you are the Cavalry every
one of us has a role to play in this uh
you may be a parent a child a brother a
sister
you can be a technically literate voice
of reason to people who don't
necessarily get it they're not where we
are
and with that I want to thank you all
very much and I think I may have a
couple of minutes for questions if
anybody has questions
yes
um I'm not sure so the question was
about doing gene therapy on yourself I
don't know if you published it in like
academic journals but it's a YouTube
video like you can just go and watch the
Youtube video
and the one that I pulled that screen
still from is the two-year follow-up
where he said you know it's starting to
wear off
um because the the cells are being
replaced now in my stomach lining
um but uh he uh he had a couple of years
where he was just totally lactose
tolerant he could digest it
other questions
all right I can't see hands so if you've
got a question shout it out
if you want to brew your own insulin
what legal issues would you have uh I am
not a lawyer I am not pretending to be a
lawyer I don't even play one on TV
um
I wouldn't even Venture a guess
I have some thoughts but I I am so far
removed from it
um
it's probably a weird area of law
there probably are some people who can
help you figure it out
uh but like there's people doing it and
putting it out there and they haven't
been arrested so you can take that with
his as many grains of salt or insulin as
you want
other questions
just Shout
okay
oh yeah what's the question
like your
review your
your Android device tracksuit well if
you were to install cyber info
darkest Secrets game
would that be a possibility
um so the question was with
uh some type of a deep brain stimulator
or a
brain implant
could that instead of give you
stimulation could it read the electrical
impulses and send that back to companies
to figure out your deepest darkest
secrets
uh maybe
um right now we're not quite there I saw
a paper a couple of weeks ago
that said yes that's totally a
possibility like with special equipment
in your head is like entombed in a bunch
of electrodes uh and you're given a
picture of something then
um this can recreate it with some
artificial intelligence that's helping
doing the mapping and that's
kind of true but what the paper buried
is the fact that they told the
artificial intelligence what you were
going to be thinking of and it recreated
a picture of it based on some of the
patterns so it's it's not there yet is
it possible sure what would it look like
when that actually is possible would you
have to be hooked up in a hundred
different places
maybe most of the deep brain stimulators
have a very specific placement
so they would read a very specific part
of your
electrical impulses if they can read it
some of them don't have the capability
to you know act like the
the microphone instead of the speaker
some of them are just speakers so I
think that that the kind of bulk
collection of
worst fears and Nightmares it's probably
not going to happen without some serious
Hardware around your head but like maybe
we're getting there I don't know who
knows who's to say what's going to
happen in 10 years
other questions
all right not hearing anything
going once going twice
sold thank you very much stick around
for sick he's going to come up and talk
about hacking a solar system and
protecting your solar system so thank
you
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