Doomed to Fail - Re-release: Eligible Receiver 97 - War Games Part 2

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

In War Games Part 2, we talk about the 1997 Game 'Eligible Receiver' where "Government Hackers" were able to disable civilian power grids, get into top-secret government networks, and take command of a ship. We chat about how the internet is really young, and how we are really old, and how everything that Hollywood can imagine is probably true.   Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail]

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Hello. Oh, I did. I wanted to show you my kid's school pictures, but you crushed recording, but I was going to put them in the picture.

Look at this. Look at this grown girl. Look at this boy. Look at his little arms crossed. Anyway. A little boss posing. Just, they've really killed it with their pictures this season. So they had great piece all pictures too.

Ready to go, kids. Yeah, good job. So welcome to the new and revised doom to fail where I introduced the episodes ahead of talking a lot. Oh, yeah, we're doomed to fail. Welcome to Do You to Fail. I'm Farr's joined here by Taylor. We just recorded the first episode for the week and now we're recording the second episode, which if I recall correctly, is going to be part two.

of our episode from last week. And also apparently, you know, I kind of touched on a little bit with the talks I had this week about spying and espionage and the CIA and all that stuff. Yeah, that's kind of what we're talking about. Sweet. So it is,

last week, we did Abel Archer 83, which was a 1983 war game. And this week we're doing eligible receiver 97, which is an internet war game that I did in 1997. Last week I did preface saying that, like, I heard that a lot of people from Cantor Fitzgerald were there and that 15 of them died in 9-11. And I cannot find that written down anywhere. Like, did I make that up? I don't know.

So I'm not going to talk about that anymore. So I don't know this is true. Did they have an office in one of the towers? Well, yeah. Like over, like, about 650 people at Candacea Fitzgerald died in 9-11. Most of the people that work there died. They were actually supposed to go to the hotel. My mom works at in Las Vegas, like, the next month for an event.

and they had to cancel it because everybody was dead. Like, Chandra Fitzgerald did a great job of coming back from that. But I had heard in one of the books I've been reading, and I've been reading so many books these past couple of weeks that I can't go back and find it because I also am listening to them. So I can't like thumb through it and try to figure out where I was. You probably heard right. Yeah.

So I heard somewhere that part of the group that was doing this was in the World Trade Center in Windows on the World. And then in 1997, and they did this. exercise and then later, some of them would die in the 9-11 attacks. I don't know if that's true or not. If you read any of the books that I've been reading over the past three weeks, give us a call and tell me if you read that too. That's too specific to have been made up.

I think I read it possibly in nuclear war or scenario. I potentially read it there, but I don't know if that's where I heard about Abel Archer to begin with. And then I read that book last week, 1983, War Game Books, did I read it in there? And then this week, I've been reading dark territory by Frank Kaplan about the internet. And I've also been reading a new book by Fareed Zakaria, the CNN journalist,

called The Age of Revolutions, which I've really, really enjoyed. It's been just about like times in the world where people have revolted. And he talks a lot about how there isn't a mythical past. And, you know, he talks about the French Revolution and just a bunch of really fun stuff, the Industrial Revolution. So I don't think I read it in there, though, but I just have. And I also got clear and present danger from my daughter. I had an orchestra concert at a church and they had this huge wall of paperbacks that you can take and like bring back or share or whatever like a lending library.

They took clear and present danger. So I'm in the middle of that. So I got a lot going on in my brain. I love that movie. I don't know if I've seen that movie. It's Harrison Ford in that. It's Harrison Ford. I should see it.

Did you know that like clear and present danger some of all fears? it's the same character it's all Jack Ryan right it's all Jack Ryan I thought that was a recent invention with John Cresensky doing him but I guess Harrison Ford played him and Ben Affleck did too

yeah I want to advocate for John Crancicki not writing any more movies after I saw Fick because it's terrible who wrote that back in John Cresensky he wrote it yeah it was awful did your kids like it

Florence liked it Miles liked it one and I were like I can't we could just watch that Just like everything, everyone all wants. Yeah. So anyway, I also saw something on Reddit this week that was like, you should get a t-shirt that has something that happened on your birthday on it that like is like a funny thing. So my birthday is June 5th and Ronald Reagan died on June 5th, 2004. So it would be awesome if I had a t-shirt that said Ronald Reagan died on my birthday?

I think where you are, that would be awesome. It makes me laugh so hard. It could also be like, I feel like you could go either way. You could be like, oh, I'm so sorry for you. I don't know. It makes me laugh so hard. So for you, I found two things that happened on your birthday. One of them is, well, there were like a ton of really funny things that you could put on a t-shirt for your birthday.

But one of them is the song, Thrift Shop by McLemore was released on my birthday. Wouldn't that be hilarious for you a shirt? I did that moment. I thought McLemore was going to be the next thing. And that was shame on me. He's fine. But actually, what happened on your birthday, farmers, on the day you were born, the USSR performed an underground nuclear test. So you could get a sure that says the USSR performed a nuclear underground test the day I was born.

Do you know which mama was? No. I love their Sarbamba. That's like my favorite. It wasn't that one, but I do love that idea. But those are great. And I bring that up because the day before my first birthday, Ronald Reagan, watched the movie War Games. that we talked about last week

with Matthew Roderick. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, of course. It's where the monitor is just like black background with the green letters, right? Of course. And again, speaking of like going back to our last episode,

how old we are, like that wasn't that long ago. The span of human evolution, that was zero time ago. Here, to anybody who's like semi-young adjacent, there was a point in time when if you wanted to play a computer game,

you would have to type in the actual file directory where that computer game was stored. So you would go in to DOS and you would type C-colon slash slash and you would manually type in the directory. I know. It's wild. I'm under my desk getting, I haven't turned my fan on because I'm getting hot talking about this. Hold on. But yeah, not about long ago that all this was happening. So Ronald Reagan goes up to where we're. goes camp david whatever settled in watches war games comes back to the oval office the next day and he's like in a regular meeting with his joint use of staff or whoever and he's like hey do you guys see this movie and they hadn't because it had just come out and marl draggen got like

to see it at home i wonder if the president still does that he's like i really want to see his movie and he got a lot of special privileges no i know but like what do you think he requests do by them yeah gone with the win probably i don't know um i mean he i could get that for him right now. I was like, nude. So he goes to his office. He's like, has anybody seen this? And they're like, no, you know, like, what is you talking about?

And he's like, could this happen? And they were like, no, you know, it's probably just a movie, whatever. And then to come back to him a week later with the report and they're like, actually, sir, it's way worse than that. Wait, Taylor, before you get into it, because I haven't seen war games, I've probably seen bits and pieces of it. Yeah. You just like, what did, okay, what did he see? What did Ronald Reagan see? He saw a kid hacking into like the military computer system and potentially responding to like a threat by the Soviet Union and starting World War III.

He thought he was playing a good game. So like Ender's game came out in 1995 or 1985. Have you read that? No. Of course I haven't read that. Well, I'm just, well, it's a kid's book. It's so good. but it's about the future and this child who's going to save the world from these aliens,

but essentially what he does is plays a video game to attack the aliens, which is like drone warfare now. You know, like it's predicting all this stuff that's happening. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know exactly what happened at the end of war games, but I know that he like almost ruined the world.

It's funny because it sounds like Ronald Reagan's understanding of technology is the exact, same as every parent's understanding of technology of like if I'm on the internet everybody's seeing what I'm doing and it's not like he wasn't wrong you know and this is all so unbelievably new so um like it's not weird that he thought this you know like and everybody being like the internet isn't a threat nothing bad could happen is happening all around him so even after this happens the government really doesn't do anything they're not regulating anything they're not even like locking things down because they don't know what it means you know like they don't know what a network is like we know what a network is kind of but like they don't know what network is they

don't know what that means and um so there's a couple times when like Hollywood movies because Hollywood has you know a better imagination than the government and a bigger budget for these things like presuppose things that the government's like oh shit could that really happen and then they have to like go figure it out and then they have to like go figure it out and this is definitely one of them. So the thing with this is we've been doing like intercepting data, intercepting communications for always. What was the Will Smith Gene Hackman,

enemy of the state? Did it that predict Stodden and like Prism and all that? It might have. Okay, I'm sorry. No, I don't know. We should maybe watch some of these movies and have a movie club because I do want to learn more. Yeah, an American political thinner. It's all the NSA.

I'm going to talk about the NSA in a second. So that's who we're talking about too. So yeah, let's, yes, I'm sure that it's exactly right. Because we've been doing things like interrupting, intercepting people's communication always. You know, like there's always going to be some dude who like knock down a dinner on a horse to like get the things that they were sending. We could do it with telephone wires or could do it with telegraphs and we would do things like, you know, either shut the system down or send the wrong codes, some like the wrong information to people. and we've always been doing that. As long as we figure out how to do it, we've been doing it.

So that's always been a thing, but the internet is like a whole new thing because you don't have to physically be anywhere. You know, like it doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't know where the person is. Like you can figure out what they're saying. So also, anything that we do,

our enemies can do as well. And that's the way everybody thinks. So no matter where you are, who your enemy is. If you're learning to do something on a computer, your enemy is either not far behind you or they've already done it. You know, things are just kind of evolve like that quickly. So, oh, also like,

Never forget, when the engineers, the last job we had together, did that presentation, and they said there is no cloud. It's just someone else's computer. I don't remember that, but that sounds right. Yeah, I think about that all the time because I'm like, you're right. Like, there is no cloud. Someone else's computer. Like, stuff isn't saved forever infinitely in something infinite that doesn't exist.

It's like a very real piece of hardware where things are saved. It's not someone's computer. It's like a warehouse that Amazon controls. Well, it's not, but it's physical, you know. It is physical. Yeah. Yeah. And now, you know, when you work at any corporate job, like we do, or any job at all, you're going to get a text from your CEO that's not from them asking you to buy gift cards. And I used to train on this at my last role as well. And I found some stories of like, at one point, some dude from Estonia called a bunch of offices at Google and Facebook and was like, hey, I had a work order to come and fix his printer. And I did it and no one paid me. And they would just pay him. He made like millions of dollars. because, you know, there's things where, like, people just were like, oh, okay, and then they would just pay him.

Or when someone hacked Robin Hood, they did it by calling me in the help desk and asking to have their password reset. Taylor, I hope I'm so rich one day that someone can scam me out of a million dollars and I don't even notice it. Yeah, don't even notice, for real. But I also was talking to someone, I won't say who because I don't want to get their company in trouble, but whose companies having trouble with people actually clicking on the links and opening up the text messages, you know, because, like, they, try to make you, like, you know, they scare you, like litigation or I'm your CEO. I need you right away or things like that. So like that hadn't happened, that had been happening in like different ways. Like I guess I could write you a letter and tell you that I'm doing something you would write back and we could like do a thing. Like remember when Maria Antoinette was that

guy was tricked into buying that necklace? Yeah. Like that's shit like that has always happened. But now it can happen so much more exponentially because of the internet. You know. So, um, everyone be careful. get a password manager, don't answer weird texts from your boss. They're not going to text to you, ask you for gift cards. They're not. And just, you know, make sure that you're not opening any attachments and all of that stuff.

And like most of us know that now, but still not everyone because they wouldn't do it if it didn't work, you know? Totally. And some of the first things that people did using the internet to do this like cyber warfare, is it would do simple things like send an email and be like, hey, it's your commander. Meet me at this corner at 5 o'clock I have to tell you something. and then the guy would get there and they'd kill him, you know, or put him in jail or whatever.

So right away, they're hard to trick people in different ways. So as far as like the presidents go and again talking about how new this all is. So Dick Cheney and George Bush, they had never used a computer when they were in office. Like there's like wasn't a reason to, you know. You're so old, Taylor. I know. and like Barack Obama was the first president who had a personal cell phone and he had a BlackBerry, do you remember this? And he didn't want to give it up.

They made him, they built him one just for him because it had to be so much more encrypted than anything else, you know, but he was like, what he was talking about? I have to have a cell phone. But like that hadn't even been a thing. Do you presidents have cell phone? Like did Trump and buy? I mean, Trump had to have had an iPhone, right? Well, he definitely has one now because he's like tweeting for it. But like. But he was tweeting when he was president. I'm sure he did. But also it probably has like the most protection of anything, which I think it should, you know, all things considered.

Yeah, that is crazy. But we also like know all their text messages. Like remember how Hope Hicks was on the stand the other day in Trump's trial and she had texted during the insurrection day? Like we're all fucked. No one's ever going to hire us. Yeah, but that's not that's not hacking. That's subpoena. Yeah.

But like, but it's all there. I guess is what I mean to. Like it all exists. Yeah. I think like I was saying last time, like your stuff exists forever. and then if they need it, the government's going to go in and find it. I love that that's what she thought in that moment. Yeah, I know.

They're about to literally execute Mike Pence. Yeah. A whole thing. Okay. So back to Ronald Reagan. This is all brand new. People who were inventing the internet were like, this is going to be vulnerable, but no one really understood what that meant really yet.

And the first report back to Ronald Reagan was from 1987. It's called N. SDD-145 and you can get it now online. It is unclassified, but essentially what it says is like, we need to do something about this and it outlines what they think we should do, but no one did anything. You know, it was like every branch should have a people dedicated to cybersecurity, essentially, you know, they don't think they're using the word cyber yet, but you know what I mean. And like information security and everyone should be paying attention to this. And it really wasn't normally did anything, but they were aware that like something needed to be done.

I will say kudos to Ronald Reagan for doing that because back then the internet was probably just like one other guy. Like there's no credit card transactions happening. Yeah. No personal details. So that's such a big one too. Like the money that is now available online is insane. So yeah, the summary of NSDD-145 is it notes the quote, automated, the threat. to automated information processing systems

and lays out objectives, policies, and organizational structure designed to safeguard such systems. But it's the first time someone, like, had thought about it and written it down. So someone needs to do on top of it in some way. This is where I also wanted to bring up the book I read called the Kiltch chain. That basically is like, the government needs a really good CRM and a really good system

to be able to see what everyone is doing inside the government because they're not doing that. And that is what led to 9-11 of many things. You know, like some people knew they were there. They're not sharing it. Exactly. So they need you to share it. So all of this is flawed, and they're not really talking to each other. In the beginning, there was the ARPA net, which was on phone lines.

We'd hacked phone lines before, so you could cut that out and turn those off. But this was something new. The Internet was evolving past that. So the main government body that governs data warfare is the NSA, which is the National Security Agency. The NSA was started in World War II for code breaking. It was called Mission Intelligence Branch 8, so MI8, and now it's called the NSA. And they will do things in different presidencies based on technology and what we have, but this is, they hadn't really thought about the internet yet until, until about the 1990s as it like being a threat.

The director of the NSA from 1992 to 1996 was named Mike McConnell. He was a vice admiral of the Navy. and he went to the movies and saw the movie sneakers. Have you seen that? I just watched the trailer. No. So it is a star-studded heist film. It stars River Phoenix, Sydney Portier, Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, all these big people in it.

And it is about the NSA hiring these guys to break into their computers to see if they can. So that thing really did happen. People would hire hackers to see if they can get into someone's system and they always could. You know, so the director of the NSA sees this movie about people breaking into the NSA and he's like, well, fuck. Now something else I got to worry about.

I'm like, that's pretty. It's a great cast. It's a great cast. Ben Kingsley, honestly, I think is a little underrated. Really? I think he's well rated. Is he well rated? Yeah.

I don't watch award shows. Well, I think he's great, but I don't think anyone would say he wasn't. But I don't know. So, So there's ideas that come out of that. There's a book called Neuromancer that they use the word cyber for the first time. So it's really like in the pop culture in the 90s, in the 80s and 90s.

You know, I'm sure like the Matrix is coming out. You know, all those movies talked about like hackers. And what was the one with Senator Bullock where she orders the pizza that we talked about before? Net. The net. Yeah. Look, it's all so, so, so new that whatever Hollywood can imagine is actually stuff that can actually happen. Because it is kind of infinite and kind of new.

So a couple other things that happen. And then something that you mentioned is Oklahoma City bombing. A lot of the radicalization of people like Timothy McVeigh was coming from message boards and coming from the Internet. So they were seeing this communication that they had never seen before. In 1993, the World Trade Center is bombed. Do you remember when that happened? 1983. No, I'm saying, would you remember that they bombed the parking garage?

Yeah, yeah, I just mentioned KSM did that. But he organized it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. My dad was on the phone with someone there when it happened. And he said, like, he heard who's talking to her about something because they worked in the Board of Trade in Chicago. And they were all of a sudden, like, everyone was screaming and the lady hung up. And he said it was very scary. Yeah, I'm sure. I can't imagine. Yeah. So now it's the 90s. Again, all best stuff is happening. The Internet's coming. And Al Gore is going to say that he invented the Internet. So Al Gore, who was vice president at this time. in the mid-90s. Everyone obviously made fun of him for saying that he invented the internet. But essentially, he was like the first person in Congress who was really, really excited about it. He crafted the High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, which gave $600 million to working on networks for the government. He invented, he did the first person to say

information superhighway. He said, I took an initiative in creating the internet, which really meant he was passing these bills and talking about it in a way that no one else. was. Even Newt Gingrich said, quote, in all fairness, it's something that Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the father of the internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got an internet. Did he actually say I invented the internet? He said, I took the initiative in creating the internet. Yeah, in context, that's not insane. I mean, you know. No, of course that. He did. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But we all remember him saying, I invented the internet.

And they're like, no, I'm pretty sure some like MIT researchers who work in dungeons invented the concept. Jimber boy went to that dungeon at Jim's funeral. Yeah. I met one of the guys who sent the first message on the internet from UCLA. So yeah, it's those guys. But Al Gore, like he really worked for it since like the 70s. So he was someone who was like, this is up, this is coming and I see it. So they need to do obviously a war game on this.

We talked about what a war game is last week. It's a practice of something that could happen. Some people play the baddies. Then you play the goodies. And you figure out what could happen in these scenarios. So every year they do an eligible receiver exercise. So the Pentagon's joint staff, they have this exercise every year. Every year it's a different war game to highlight some sort of threat or threat on the horizon.

So eligible receiver 97 was held. in or out of the World Trade Center, we'll never know because I cannot reference what I've read that said that it was. But it was June 9th through 13th, 1997. The NSA was divided into two teams. The blue team was the NSA, as they are now equipped to retaliate to some sort of cyber attack. And the red team played North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. They did all sorts of stuff, like DDoS attacks. They changed emails that were sent to people. They disrupted communication. They accessed over 36 government networks. At one point, they

couldn't get in to the J2, which is like the Joint Chiefs office. They couldn't get into their computers. So they just called the office and asked to reset the password. And they did. And they were in. It's exactly what happened at Robin Hood

like two years ago. Yeah. I mean, that's the part that I think Hollywood's sensationalized as a lot of is like it's mostly just social engineering. Like it's not really it's not like some whiz kid who's like 50 years more advanced to everybody else that's like hacking. Totally.

And they weren't allowed to use anything that wasn't commercially available. So like imagine them just like going to Radio Shack like and just like getting tried to do this. Again, you're showing our age. No, I know, but it's the 90s. I feel like I can say that. So they nobody knew that it was going to happen. It was super, super, super secret. The NSA council, Richard Marshall was, um,

suspected of espionage because someone told on him for being in the office so much. And he was like, oh my God, I'm here for this top secret thing. Fuck you. Which is hilarious. But like no one, it was that. It was that secret. But they really did get into computer networks. They had like a board, like a board game where they could, they could hack the 911 system. They could shut down the electricity in, in major cities. They could, they flooded the fax lines in all of the major government agencies. They got into so many passwords and so many people's emails because they would literally go and dumpster dive and find passwords. People had written down and thrown out. And also, most of the passwords were just like, password. Like, they weren't even, they weren't good. So like, and of course, that was like,

also brand new. So people were just like, okay, whatever. Like, I remember the first couple times I had to make a password. I was like, what is this? You know, you use your name or something. Right. But so they did all this stuff. And then the third thing they did. So the first thing was civilian. So they were able to prove that they could have. They did not, but they could have, like, knocked out 911 lines and electricity in major cities. The second was the military where they really did, you know, flood the fax lines, turn off the phone lines, send fake emails to people. They did all the things that they said they were going to do.

And then the third thing was they really did hijack a ship. They hijacked the ship MV National Pride, which is hilarious. The name of National Pride, like using the, like the internet and their all of their technology to wait 97 so they took control the remote control operated a ship they like yeah they hijacked it so they like turned off all of its stuff and they left their own um calling card which was killroy was here so they would you know basically they turned everything off and said kill right was here like they could have taken it over you know it's wild yeah um so they also found other people

in there too. There were other hackers already in there that they didn't know. And so they were just kind of like, they weren't doing anything bad. They were just kind of poking around. There was someone from France turned out to just be like a person who was like, can I see if I can do this? And they could. So if they could take over a ship in 1997,

can they just like take over a plane today that's flying? I'm sure you probably could. I'm sure that there's like a bunch of ways that they make it so you cannot do that. But I'm I'm sure that's not impossible. that's terrible. Yeah. Like they can get into pretty much anything.

So like the government can and other people can. And there's also like other nefarious people unfiliorated the government who are trying to get into things. And then like you said last time like everything is saved and stored. They're watching everything that you do because it is like what could possibly happen next is a real question. You know, like you couldn't have imagined what happened, what is happening right now. like the technology that allows you and I to have this conversation when you're in Texas and I'm in California and record it and share it with the world is mind-blowing to 1997 you know to like who knows what's going to happen in the next 30 years now we do sound like our parents but yes I mean I'm not not afraid but I'm also I'm going to try my best yeah like I recognize that like my job is has been for the last decade or so to teach people how to use software and also I don't want to learn any new

software so I get it we're fine we know as much so we need to know to be fine for our lifetimes we don't need to know the next thing yeah totally that's that's me clutching my Blackberry and being like I don't want to I had a pink one it was so cute but here we are so after this um only one person who was a technical officer in the Department of Defense in the Pacific noticed that something was happening and unplugged the computers. But he was the only one. And it was supposed to take two weeks to see how much they could do in two weeks, and they

finished all of their directives in four days. They were able to just like heck everything. Taylor, I might have to edit this out. But do you remember a time when we were employed together where we were subject to a incredibly pervasive DDoS attack where the only solution we thought was to fly a person from our team to the storage facility that has like the computers the part version of the software was hosted on and just unplug it yep is that crazy that was our life that was that was like not even 10 years ago no that's that long ago I remember that all the time

because I remember how much apologizing I had to do. That's right. Oh, yeah, that sucks. I was in charge of apologizing publicly, and I did that a lot, a lot, a lot. But yeah, there's so much that you can do. Like, that's just one of many, many things that people can do, and there's so much social engineering now and so many things.

But eligible receiver 97 was really the first one where they were like, oh, shit. Like, someone who just goes to the Radio Shack can hack into the Department of Defense. That is very, very bad. And then hopefully it's gotten better. but it hasn't gotten a ton better because the kill chain, the book that I read about the military not talking to each other is from 2020. So there's still,

the systems aren't connected in the right way. And who knows how safe they are and who is listening to this. It's not listening to this on Wednesday. You know. Taylor, you know what when you mentioned the ship, sorry, I keep harping on that. Again,

we keep talking about how old we're getting. But I think that there's like a convergence of things that are happening, which is just like life experience, historical context, all that stuff mixing together. When you said the ship thing, you know what I thought of was we were living in Los Angeles at the time. And I can't remember this guy's name, but somewhere on Hollywood, this like Mercedes-Benz and you know where Hollywood like West Hollywood, like in West Hollywood, like the lanes are

separated, you know, like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's densely packed. And like this Mercedes Benz carrying this one pasture at like three o'clock of the morning accelerated to some like absurd speed like 100 miles per hour on Hollywood in West Hollywood and crashed into a tree and killed them. And it was the journalist who had reported on general Stanley McChrystal talking shit about President Obama which President Obama immediately fired

this was like during the Iraq War when he was there reporting and it was very suspicious the way he died no um and imagine like okay so now imagine if you are a spy

and you are in like a Tesla and they like hack him to your Tesla and kill you right? Like there's so many this would have been like This was, I think it was 2015 or 16. Mm-hmm. I mean, like, cyber hacking to kill you in a different way than, like, poisoning you.

You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but that's the part that's like crazy when you said that ship. Because it was like a ship in 1987, our cars are so computerized. Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. I read like an article or a thing a while ago where there was like a, a,

a used car dealer or something where they would lease cars to folks and they would put a monitor in it. And if they hadn't paid, they would turn off the car, but they were doing it while they were driving. And you're like, you can't do that, you know? Like maybe you can make it so they can't turn it on again if they're not paying for it. But you'd have to tell them that you were going to be able to do that. But you can't just turn a car off in the middle of the fucking freeway. People are going to die, you know? But they have like the physical ability to do that.

Like, I can lock my car from my phone. So who knows? You know? I'm on your team. I'm scared now. I know. And I'm a little scared. So just one more thing.

Out of the eligible receiver 97 directly, we started the United States Cyber Command, which is U.S. Cybercom, which sounds cool. And that's the department right now that is in charge of, is a part of the NSA in charge of trying to figure out how to keep us safe. And then one more anecdote from the book. I'm almost done with it. I'll finish it. And maybe I'll have more next week.

one thing that we did over the air over the the airwaves of the internet basically using the internet is in the 90s there was a stuff happening in Serbia and there was an uprising and to stop people from going out and protesting and being part of it the United States made

most of the TV channels play Baywatch so people stayed home that's pretty awesome because it was the most popular show in the world and people wanted to watch it but stuff like that like it's not just like your computer, but like with the internet, like we're saying, like, the water company is

all computerized. You know, they go shut down the water. They could shut down electricity. They could shut down all of the essential services and all of that. Because now it's all online, which is something inconceivable 30 years ago. It's, it's like,

we just talked about how the president of Iran's plane, like, or helicopter was just downed. Like, why do these people? So it was like when, uh, you've, Guinea progosian, the guy who revolted against Putin, and then he's like flying on a plane and the plane crashed. I would assume at some point, like, you just have to, I mean, I don't know. I don't know he's got to avoid.

You got to like, you got to avoid all people. You got to like live on a farm in the middle of nowhere and not have anyone to you and be totally self-esteemable and don't take any deliveries and don't use any technology. Aren't you kind of doing that right now? No, I'm literally talking to you right now over Zoom. so no I just told you I can lock my brand new Subaru with my phone How do you like the Subaru? I like it.

It's pretty awesome. Nice right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, we are fast approaching a point where the world makes no sense to us anymore. Yep, yep, yep. Maybe we'll just, if we do keep doing this.

Do you feel old? No, physically I actually don't feel old. Like, I don't feel like super good. You get tired quick? I'm tired of. I've almost been tired. I remember in high school, I was like, I'm tired. You're right.

I wasn't doing anything, you know. So I feel like I can sleep and I can move and my face looks youthful. And I don't feel old. Do you look forward to the quiet of nobody talking to or being around you and being alone with your thoughts? Like on my day-to-day basis? Yes. Or like, yes, yes. I'm very rarely alone.

And I know that, I know, like, I know. Like during COVID, I worked with a lot of people who were like, yeah, you know, I live alone. And I talk to you all here and then turn off my computer and I just like, you know, watch TV or I talk to people on the phone. But I don't see other people and that was really difficult for them. And then for me, I was like, really, because there's always someone yelling at me. Like, I also have him taking care of two children who are here. And there's always someone here. So sometimes my favorite time of night is like if everyone goes to sleep and I'm up by myself at like one o'clock, I'll like get a drink and just walk around the house and be like, ah.

That does sound nice. Pretty nice. Yeah. No, I've noticed as part of like getting older is when it gets closer to like a socially acceptable bedtime, I get kind of excited. Like, okay. No fomo. I can actually go lay down.

Yes. I was, I was to go out as the other day. I always think about how in grad school I met this dude on the subway and we dated for a while. And but our first date, he was like, oh, hey, why don't we meet at this bar? Why don't we meet at 10 o'clock? And I was like, at night? Like, are you on drugs? Like, what are you talking about?

And then I was like, okay. So I like worked all day, went to grad school, went home and like, looked around the apartment for two hours and then went on this date. It's so weird. Like, this is too late to me. What's wrong with you? Can't do that. And I like, I'm like, I'm not going to start something at 10 o'clock at night. That makes no sense.

I have been getting comedy tickets lately that start at 10. and those are rough nights. Those are really, really rough nights. Yeah, I can't. That's too late. Because you're not going to get home until like one night. Yeah. Well, so we just segue into old people corner.

But I mean, I can imagine being, you know, in the situation room with Ronald Reagan being like, ugh, Reagan, like, of course this isn't going to happen. Like, of course we're not going to have like computers attack us. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And then like, oh, no, they can. And like, they can. they can affect things in real life. It's actually huge,

what they can do in the access that they can have to people's lives that we haven't never even, never even imagined. Have you ever watched Fargo? Any of the Fargo? Oh, yeah. Oh, the movie or? The show.

No, I never watched the show. The show is really good. It has a bunch of different seasons and they're all kind of different. But in one of them, there's like this, they put this bug on people's computers where like they want to see

if you're going to do this thing. And as soon as you do it, it makes your computer take a picture of you and send it to them so they know that you did it. And it's like really scary because then they like kill the people who did it, you know. Yeah, that was an episode of Black Mirror. Was it? I bet.

Yeah, Black Mirror. I mean, just watch some Black Mirror. Also all that's probably possible. If you mate all this with like AI, you can see the natural progression of it is like at scale dramatically worse than what it is right now. Yeah. Mm-hmm. She's got a crazy.

I don't see it getting better, you know, and I don't even know what better means. Like you were saying before, like, sure, the government is listening to my stuff to make sure that I'm not going to do something terrible. Okay. You know, but also then like, when does that go too far? And then like, I understand privacy rights. But like I remember like when also in our last in places of work where GDPR was a consequence and a thing? And then you'd be like, okay, well, if you want to be deleted from everything and you get to lead for everything, you want to get back in, why did you do this to us? You know?

That happened all the time. Yeah, my mind is spinning now because I've made fun of a lot of people in my lifetime who were like really into privacy. Mm-hmm. Anyways, lessons are being there. I know. I had a lot of people who were like in the beginning, like very afraid of the internet. My cousins were like, I don't want anyone to know my address. And I'm like, dude, if you think that I couldn't find your address in four seconds, you dumb.

See, that was my, that was always my, I'm literally thinking about a relative of mine who's like, I don't want anything of mine on the internet. I'm like, anybody of the internet can find your social security number, like in. Yeah, like, do you think I can't find you? Like, you have one download of Onion or tour and like, you're done. Totally. And like, I, I met my husband in college, but whenever any of my friends are like, like, oh, I met someone. I'm like, okay, first and last. Doesn't Mother's made a name?

I'm like, let me find out about them. Not even that, even before you even talk to them, just reverse image search them. Of course. Because that image is usually the one they're most proud of, which is the one that's being posted in the most places. Again, it's airing. yeah yeah um yep that's fun nice little positive note between Fontamo Bay and this

things are mostly fine yeah i mean you listen to us for it's not things are mostly fine with taylor and far as so i think that our episodes are striking a more positive note mostly because again i think we're just getting to the age where we just don't give a shit anymore. It's like it stuff is just not that consequential to us anymore. I know and I like I mean, obviously love doing this and I just like I don't know I feel like we're learning so much stuff and talking about stuff and the more we learn about it, we're like we've always been the same. You know? Yeah, exactly. People don't change. We've always been the same. We do the same thing in many

different ways and we're going to keep doing that forever. So buckle up. I will say I am like, again, it's like an old thought. I am getting, like, more and more into reading about, like, the U.S., like, military surveillance. Like, just, like, the whole, the whole thing is, like, super fascinating. When I was researching Gitmo, it took me down so many different rabbit holes of, like, all these different organizations within the federal government that, man, there's a lot of depth to it. Like, if you actually understand this stuff, you have to have been, like, the smartest person in the world because there's so many different agencies. with subcommands and task force and i don't think there's anyone who knows at all you know it's impossible it's impossible and like and also not designed that way so like in my story like

you know the the an attorney of the nsa is told on by a colleague for being in there late which is what spies do you know like during the cold war the spies would like be the last person to leave for lunch because they would be taking a briefcase of documents out to lunch to be copied that they bring it back, you know? So like you'd always be on edge as well, being like, or being like, are they doing something that I don't know about? Like what is happening? And then, I don't know, there's so many things you can think about.

The U.S. just started testing drones, underwater drones. Do you hear about this? Or like submarine drones? And like I started reading about it and I went out again another rapid hole because it was like, this is not like airplane drones because airplane drones get a signal immediately to them. In the depths of the ocean, you can't get a, signal. It is crazy technology.

I just learned that you can't find a submarine. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No. That's real scary. It's so interesting. It's so wild and interesting. Anyways, so I guess this little precursor foreshadowing of the topics that we're going to be discussing later. We're doing fine. TVD. Thanks for coming along. Tell your friends. Yeah, tell your friends or your family. Anything else to report, Taylor? No, I got some support from some folks on Instagram just about we talked about last week, separate a church from state in schools.

So thank you for people who are also agree that if you want to go to religious school, go to one. But if you don't go to religious school, keep it out of school. Yeah, people, like, let people believe what they want to believe. Yeah, who cares? Cool. Thank you. Sweet. Shout out our email and social.

Doom to fail pod at gmail.com. Please send us an email. We are on all the socials at doom to fail pod. And, yeah, follow along. We do little, we'll let you know when episodes are coming up. We'll share some other things that are relevant. And we also have a substack. So I set out emails like once a month with all of our episodes so you don't lose that.

And please tell your friends. This is like episode 108 or something. So we have a lot that you can catch up on. And we're excited to share it. And we should be famous by now. The fact that we're not famous right now should be. It's because you have not done any marketing. It's your fault.

Wait, are you talking about me or the audience? You. I thought you were blaming the audience. Business, business, business. Oh my God. Also, just everyone can cut off right now, but just also in the movie, the terrible movie that I watched last night,

the imaginary friend, the If, there was a scene with Bobby Moynihan where he's literally doing like the prepping for a presentation and he's like, 20% growth in Q4, 20% growth in Q4, business, business, business, graphs,

business. You're like, has drunkers? Get rid of a meeting? like what is happening was so stupid and now that's going to be 20% Q4 20% Q4 this is business files filed reports I'm going to catch myself accidentally literally saying those words soon um anyways thank you Taylor thank you for sharing very fun um I'll go ahead and cut it off