EverydaySpy Podcast - You Can Be TARGETED Just by Carrying a Phone—Here’s HOW

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

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The answer to your first question about the fidelity of targeting down to an individual level and whether or not that's how difficult that is. In the digital era, it's surprisingly not hard to identify a target down to within approximately one half of one meter of where they are at any given time. It depends on whether or not you have what's known as a unique selector. A selector is essentially like your cell phone. Your cell phone number is a selector. Your email address is a selector. There are certain metadata that's carried on your laptop, on your internet, on your, on cellular devices, on your tablet, that identify you as a unique user. So then what is actually happening is they're not targeting the individual.

They're targeting the hardware. So they're targeting the actual device that's transmitting the signal that they're able to geolocate. So much of intelligence is spent identifying and collecting selectors so that when you need, to target that individual with high fidelity, you'll know where they are. Whether you need to target them for a kinetic strike, like we're talking about with Israel, or whether you need to target them for a human operation because you need someone to bump them or someone to seduce them or someone to extract information, you always want to know where that person is, and we live in an era where you can do that.

You can do that with just commercial technology. That's how advertisers get onto your phone as well. They geo-target you as a specific user based on your selectors. So is it difficult to collect that information? No, but it is difficult to carry out kinetic strikes when you have that information, because now you have to send, you know, high fidelity armaments in to actually strike the target and strike the target where they are. There's always a risk for collateral damage. Maybe the cell phone is in the house, but the owner is in the backyard. So if you strike the house, you may not actually hit the backyard if you're using a highly targetable device. So there's always risk associated with it. The second question is, that you had about driving trucks across the Iranian border, this is a two-part challenge, right? First, borders are very difficult to police. That's why you see debates all around the world about how much people can and can't control immigration.

The United States is trying to build walls because it understands that the border is very porous. The same thing is true, especially along coastline. You live in Dubai. Think about how much coastline in Dubai is not actively policed. Right? How much coastline could anybody just sail a small sailboat up to and and dock the sailboat somewhere, park the sailboat with at anchor and take a little dinghy and they can walk right into the downtown Dubai without going through immigration without anybody even knowing that they're there? The same thing is true for desert border and a desert border is a lot of what Iran has to deal with. So could somebody get through a porous border? Absolutely. And Iran isn't a very wealthy country. It's not like it has a large border patrol. border protective service. So getting across the border may not be as difficult as people think.

Being able to even get across the border and stay there for an extended period of time to build a drone launch facility is not beyond the realm of realistic. That makes me question something else. I used to have debates on my team on whether things like Pegasus are real and what are the actual capabilities. So if I have my phone right now and Tucker used to talk about how he lives with the fact that the intelligence have access to all his calls and his phone and everything. I'm in the middle. I know that WhatsApp is encrypted,

but I know whenever I have high-level meetings with people, I have to put it in those, you know, the box that blocks all the transmissions. You put it before me. So, so that's making, you know, kind of bringing up those questions again, can an intelligence service,

one is sophisticated as Mossade or the U.S. or some of European countries or even China? For my phone or your phone, let's just call my phone. It's more basic. For my phone, would they be able to, you think, in your opinion, be able to access all my calls?

calls, landline calls, WhatsApp calls, signal calls, telegram, my chats. Could they listen to me at any time? Or, you know, people are just getting a bit too excited there? No, if anybody believes they have privacy, then they are misled. There's if we have a saying in the intelligence world that that you're only as safe as your level of interest. If you're not interesting to people, if you're just a normal person going about a normal life doing a normal thing, nobody's watching you. So you blend into the crowd, you blend into the noise.

If they wanted to collect against you, then you would be interesting. The people who are supremely interesting, those are the people who, every capability that an intelligence service has, is trying to get onto your phone, trying to get into your computer, trying to get into your smart watch,

your smart refrigerator, your smart TV. They're trying to get into the smart watches and the smart devices of your children and your wife and your, and your mother-in-law and your father-in-law, if you're a target, there's no technical place to hide. You will be penetrated.

So I say that because WhatsApp is a fantastic example. WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted. So what that means is if anybody cracks the encryption on one end or the other, then they have all of your messages. They have all of your phone calls. They can basically simulate your phone. So if someone were to clone your phone, they would clone your WhatsApp security key, and now anybody who calls that cloned phone is going to feel like they're calling your phone.

So it's not actually safe. The same thing is true as Signal. There's a way to get around all of these tools, because as fast as the technology can be created, there are intelligence organizations and criminal organizations who are trying to reverse engineer it. Do you think a company like Meta would give a backdoor access to the intelligence services? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think any, I think any company that that wants to survive in its own legislative environment is going to cooperate with the intelligence services. Because the last thing, you know, anybody like Apple or Huawei or meta, the last thing they want to do is have government policy turn against them and kill their company.

So they will cooperate. Holy shit. Yeah. If you feel like you're safe, you're not safe. I don't know why anybody thinks that that there is a capability. that just doesn't exist to find who you are, what you're saying, or who you're talking to. In a world where we have terrorists and human smugglers and drug traffickers, in a world where, you know, there are, there are bombs that are literally hitting individual targets in Iran and Israel and Ukraine, how in the world do people feel like we're safe anywhere?

The only place that you're safe is if you aren't a threat, if you actually don't try to, you know, stir up the hornet's nest, then people just, ignore you. But if you present if you present yourself as a threat, then capabilities will be poured into you. Now, I've lived with the fact that, um, similar to Tucker Carson, I'm like, look, I don't think they listen to all my, to all my communication and I've taken measures, but I'm, you know, I'm, I know there's like an 80, 90% chance of those measures that are going to be enough. You know, little me, I'm not going to be able to compete against the CIA or Chinese intelligence or Mossad or or any Arab intelligence. And so I've just, and especially with AI coming in as well,

Like, you know, people talk to chat, GPD, like it's their best friend. I speak to a lot of these leaders in the AI world, and they all speak, you know, they're all have an understanding that privacy is dead. And some of them are even like, you know, Mario, we're actually considering open sourcing everything about us. People will have access to our chats, to our emails, everything. People are actually considering that. Because they know the world that we live in is just no longer a private world. And as AI gets integrated into everything we do, anyone that has access to your agents and will

have access to literally everything about you. which is pretty crazy world that leads to a potential dystopian world with centralization of power. But I kind of bringing it back to this because I would have had a two-hour conversation with you just about that if it wasn't for a war going on as we speak. Now, we've talked about what Israel has done. I want to go to Iran and what Iran's achieved. What was your reaction when you saw their response? We saw 250 missiles on the first day, another, I think about 100 on the second day. Today's the third day.

We've had about the same. I think the few of them hit southern Israel from memory. and cause significant damage. But at the same time, we haven't seen Hezbollah respond. Huthis responded with barely anything. What's your general take on the response so far? I think that what we're seeing is Israel's military strategy really working right now. Israel, when they launched against Hamas,

Hamas was just a kind of a match in a matchbox that was a very convenient time to get aggressive against multiple different proxies for Iran. So with the movement after the October 6th attacks, I'm sorry, after the October 7th, Yeah, yeah. With that movement into Gaza, that kind of started Israel on this larger strategy of let's neutralize Hamas and then let's neutralize Hezbollah.

And by neutralizing those two targets or by, you know, eviscerating. And the Houthis as well, which didn't take a lot, but the hoosies. Correct. Essentially, what they did is they secured their eastern, their western border, and then they secured their northern border, and then they secured their southern border. And all that was left as an attack vector was to the east, coming from Iran directly. So Israel has done a good job of systematically reducing Iran's capabilities around the actual nation state of Israel.

So what we're seeing from Iran is that it's launching only the only capability it really has left. which is rockets and missiles from sites in Iran. Now, my concern is that if there is a more desperate capability, if Iran has a nuclear weapon, if they have a briefcase nuke, if they've been given a nuclear capability by China or Russia, they may be considering whether or not they want to use that capability because they are like a dog in a corner right now,

and they are desperate. So that's my bigger concern here. I don't necessarily think that we're going to see Iran launch a military strike against Israel that's joint in nature that involves a Navy and an army and an Air Force. But I am curious what desperate measure Iran will take. Do you think Iran will try to target high, high-level officials, Israeli officials as well? I don't think it can do that right now. I don't know that Iran has the capability of sophistication to be able to do that.

I also don't know that they have the intelligence required and the financials, required to be able to do a similar strike as what Israel has done to them. How effective is Iranian intelligence? I think it's the IRGC and the MOIS, I think it's called. Do you know how effective those are? What would you expect them to be? MOIS is a relatively effective tool. IRGC is a highly effective tool. The problem is that they're both very small and they're both very limited in terms of their scope of operations. So even if you were to call on the full strength of MOI and the full strength of IRGC,

they'd be able to do something damaging, but they wouldn't be able to do something critically, critically or strategically imperative, kind of like what we've seen with Israel. Israel is able to take Mossad and use Mossad in a broad aperture that is also complemented by Air Force and complemented by military and ground forces. Iran is unlikely to be able to do the same kind of thing.

That puts them in a pretty bad position. What's left for them? They're shooting those missiles at Israel. Their intelligence is limited. They're not striking U.S. basis. I don't know if you think they will, but I wouldn't think they want the U.S. to get involved. They can't even handle Israel.

And we saw the reports earlier, potentially of them looking for some sort of deal, some sort of out seeking their survival. So what could Iran do, if anything? What could we see in Israel? Could we see some sort of, could they resort to terrorist attacks? Because all other means, they've exhausted all other means? I think the most interesting calls that I want to be listening to right now are the calls between Iranian leadership and Chinese leadership

and Russian leadership and North Korean leadership. Because you know those calls are happening, right? We're in a world, a geopolitical landscape where it's very much east versus west. It's the United States and allies of the United States against a growing conglomerate of Western or Eastern powers that include China and Russia and North Korea and Iran. We've seen it in Ukraine. We've seen it across Syria.

We've seen it in multiple conflicts on it. So I'm very curious, what is Iran asking for from those other nefarious partners that it has? I'm also curious, what is Iran going to do against Western partners? because Iran has very close economic ties with UAE. And Iran is the breadbasket of the Middle East in a lot of ways. So is Iran going to somehow use its leverage with the Middle Eastern powers that are allies with the United States to gain some sort of leverage?

There's not a lot that I think Iran is going to be able to do militarily. There's not a lot that it can do through its intelligence services. It can't punch back the same way it's being punched. but that doesn't mean it can't cause disruption and damage in some other way. My biggest concern here, Mario, to be very frank, is that if Iran just quietly takes the hit, then the larger opinion of Israel just continues to go down. Because the world will start to see Israel as a bully, and they will start to see Israel as an authoritarian state,

and they will start to see Israel as an untrustworthy ally. And we've been seeing that all through Israeli conflict, you know, for the last year and a half. So I think Iran understands that the information warfare landscape might be better to its advantage than the actual military landscape.