Former CIA Agent Mike Baker on Russian Burisma Hack

The J over that camera. You do. I think there's probably, you do right? How much? You should. I mean, if people should check this, this is, again, smart TVs, you know, if you've got one that's of recent vintage, check and you'll see there's a little little hole along the frame, that's the camera, and there's a microphone set up on an audio system. Yeah, just put a piece of tape over, that's that's your whatever your low-cost solution. You can go in there and adjust and turn it off, but you know, you try figuring that out, right? That's like trying to program your your VCR, right? Trying to figure out how to get into your TV, into the settings to change the smart interactivity, and then do you also want to trust that that's what's gonna happen if you turn it off? So, yeah, just put a piece of duct tape over it. Well, they've showed that with Facebook, that even if you turn it off location, they're still tracking it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I say, again, going back to that same old thing, which is like, the government's trying to screw us over, they're spying on us, you know what, unless you're involved in criminal activity or terrorism, you know, they honestly don't have any interest, but they also don't have the resources and time available. Commercial side of things, though, is different because it drives what they're all about, which is making money. Especially when you sign those terms of agreements, the terms of use agreements, like most people just accept it. You don't look through it. Right, well there's a regulation, there's an act, there's a piece of legislation or whatever that outlaws, you know, secretly videoing, you know, I forget what it was, it was years and years ago, it was decades ago. But you give up that right by clicking on agree on those user agreements. Yeah. But, you know, I don't know anybody who's ever read a user agreement. What is this, Jamie? New law passed in California this year. Consumer Privacy Act allows anyone who resides in the state to access and obtain copies of the data that companies store on them and the right to delete that data and opt out of companies selling or monetizing their data. California's leading the way again. Yeah, it's only for residents of California, though. If you live somewhere else, you can, like, check, but you can't. Sorry, Mike. I'm moving from Idaho to California. Yeah, just for this. There's some good spots in California. Yeah, no. This isn't one of them. It's a good spot. Just too many people found out about it. My worry is more of social media companies now than anything. Even in a lot of ways more than the government spying on us, I worry about the power that something like Facebook has, the insane amount of influence they have on people and how through the use of their algorithms, they actually instigate arguments and try to get people because that's how people respond. And that's what makes people want to click on things. And that's what generates revenue. So their algorithms encourage, you know, the idea is that they encourage outrage, but they don't really. But people like outrage. So they encourage you to go seek out, like, Ari Shafir did an experiment where he used YouTube and he only searched for puppies. That's all he searched for, just puppies on YouTube. And that's all YouTube would recognize. That's all they were recommending to him was puppies. And he's like, oh, okay. So it's really not nefarious. It's based entirely on what your needs are or what your interests are. But so many people are interested in things that outrage them, that it becomes a very profitable thing for them when their algorithm shows these people what they want. But it's the problem is the people itself. It's not necessarily the algorithm. It's not like some the algorithm is some nefarious algorithm is designed to instigate strife. Now it's taking advantage of human nature to some degree, but it's also, I mean, you've raised a really important point because coming up on this election, people are talking about, oh, my God, they're going to hack in, they're going to influence the vote. They're going to, now, part of the danger is in the social engineering, right? And the way, and it's very clever. So let's say if you look at like a recent something that just happened, this actually is really interesting. And, you know, it's still being investigated. But a report came out from a group, area one, which is looking at hackers and looking at cyber security issues. And it's not a particularly well-known group. It's not like a SPERSky or some of these others that are out there. But they just came out with a report a couple days ago, basically saying that the Russians, a Russian entity, likely the former GRU, the Military Intelligence Group of the Russian Intelligence Service, hacked into Burisma. Now, Burisma is that company in the Ukraine that Hunter Biden was sat on the board of, right? And now you think, oh, Russians hacked into it. And so what happens? Almost immediately when this report comes out saying a Russian intel operation hacked into Burisma recently, as it was sort of becoming an issue and Trump was banging on about it and, you know, Hunter Biden, and there was talk about, you know, holding up Ukrainian aid if you don't investigate the Biden situation. So you'd look at this. And if you just looked at it on a very simple level, you go, wow. And I've already seen some of that narrative saying, well, look, the Russians are working on behalf of Trump again. See, that's what they're doing. They're working on behalf of Trump. They're hacking into Burisma. And that's, you know, what he was complaining about. If you step back and you think about what are the Russians trying to do, right, with all of their hacking efforts, all their social media engineering, they're trying to create dissent. So now what have you got? Now you're ramping up this story again. Now, you know, to what degree area one story or report is correct? I mean, there's some discussion as to whether it's accurate or not. But to that degree, that you have to look at everything now with a very skeptical eye and you have to say, okay, what is the purpose of it? Why is this a timed leak of information? Right? Did they intend to, in other words, the Russian Intel service, they don't do anything haphazardly, right? Did they do this with the idea that we're going to leak this out now? Because now it looks like we're still, you know, we're pushing this whole thing. We're trying to help Trump. We're going to get that narrative going again, right? Because now we're getting into an election cycle. It's interesting stuff. It's like after after Soleimani was smoked, almost immediately after, social media posts, you know, sort of pro very subtly, but pro Iranian regime, pro, you know, Soleimani, again, very subtle, but in that vein, they spiked over the course of the next 48 hours, massive numbers compared to what had been in the past of, you know, sympathetic enough to turn people's thoughts, right, to get that narrative going of like, well, oh my God, they assassinated a foreign leader. Right? That's all they're looking to do is create that. And the Iranian cybersecurity force is increasingly sophisticated. Ten years ago, they probably wouldn't have been able to orchestrate sort of that sort of social media work. I guess my point being is that we look at things very simplistically, right? We look at, because we tend to look at it through this political spectrum saying, I'm right, I'm left, whatever. But you have to step back and think, you know, what are they doing? What's the purpose of this? And maybe it's more complex or layered than just simply accepting what it is that's being said, which happens, you know, that's the danger of social media is everyone takes it face value shit that they see on Twitter or whatever. And rather than stepping back and going, I wonder if this story is even accurate, but then, you know, somebody will post some bullshit half the time. It's, you know, it's just, it's whether it's for the left or right doesn't matter, or whether it's from a foreign entity, you know, the state sponsored effort, you take it and you run with it. Next thing you know, it's got 10,000 likes and people are talking about it like it's correct. Yeah, that's a real problem with today's social media is that these agencies like the internet research agency in Russia did before the 2016 election, they really can stir up dissent with these thousands and thousands of social media accounts that they have. And they can get people thinking in a certain way, they can get people to argue things in a certain way. And you hear those talking points at these bots and these, you know, these companies that are designed just to stir people up, you see those talking points repeated. So it is effective. Oh, no, absolutely. And look, the Russians have been doing this, you know, years and years ago, decades ago, they were buying off journalists to write favorable articles or articles that they wanted to get the narrative out there for, right? So they would pay off journalists, whether it was overseas or here, wherever it may be. And that was old school, right? But the point of it, right, the reasoning behind it is still the same, right? You're trying to affect the narrative, you're trying to affect a certain opinion, or you're trying to foment dissent, you're trying to create some chaos. And you're right here, now with a lot of the social media that foreign entities are doing, they're trying to take advantage and trying to drive wedges in. So you get these things that try to drive and create more of a racial divide as an example, whatever it is that they can do. And sometimes they're doing it just simply to create the chaos, you know, sometimes they're doing it for, you know, a more specific focused reason. But we're not sophisticated. I think we're more aware of it now, because it's been in the news and we've been talking about it to some degree, but as a population, we're not very sophisticated. And so they're still going to take advantage of it. And it's not just the Russians, any nation that's got the resource or the ability and somewhat motivation and sees it in their own best interest, they're going to, you know, be engaged in this. So I have a cyber unit that's doing this sort of thing. So, you know, I don't know where it's going to go, but, you know, you worry about sort of the impact that it has. You know, it's not the, you know, it's not the idea that they're going in there to voting machines and switching up data. I mean, frankly, we should be going to a paper-based system. I would, you know, if I was in charge, I would say, that's it. No more paperless voting systems. Get that shit out of here. We're not going to rely on the internet. You know what they're doing in Iowa for the caucuses? It's all going to be internet-based voting reporting for the caucuses in Iowa. Right. Interesting. You think, you know, I mean, but again, you think that, you know, whether it's independent hackers or state-sponsored from China, Russia, wherever, of course they're targeting this, you know, and they're putting a great deal of resource into it. And they've already probably mapped out the infrastructure. So, you know, hey, get back to the old days. If you're targeting a terrorist organization and you start having success picking up comms and communications and gathering signals intelligence on them, first thing they do is throw their phones away and go back to the old system of, look, I'm going to hand write some message. I'm going to hand it to my cousin. He's going to hand it to his cousin. And that's all. That's our communication system from now on. So we should dumb down and go back to the old days and just do a paper system, you know, which takes longer and is a pain in the ass. But, yeah. You can't hack it. You can't hack it. Yeah. Anyway, that's just me.