Jack - The Penultimate Episode (feat. Alan Silberberg)

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

In the second to last installment of the Mueller, She Wrote podcast, AG discusses botnets with Alan Silberberg, author of Bots Against Us. Don’t miss the MSW series finale on May 31st with multiple ...special guests, and subscribe to The Daily Beans podcast for all of your future Mueller news with swearing needs!

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 They might be giants that have been on the road for too long. Too long. And they might be giants aren't even sorry. Not even sorry. And audiences like the shows too much. Too much. And now they might be giants that are playing their breakthrough album, Fla-
Starting point is 00:00:14 All of it. And they still have time for other songs. They're fooling around. Who can stop? They might be giants and their liberal rocket gender. Who? No one. Disadvantaged pay for was somebody else's money. My name is Renato Marriotti.
Starting point is 00:00:29 I'm the host of the on topic podcast, and you're listening to Mueller's She Wrote. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time, a two, and that campaign, and I didn't have, not have communications with the Russians.
Starting point is 00:01:04 What do I have to get involved with Putin for having nothing to do with Putin? I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about a mother than he will respect me. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.
Starting point is 00:01:19 So, it is political. You're a communist. No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring. Like all members of the oldest profession I'm a capitalist. Hello and welcome to Mullershi Road. I'm your host, A.G. And today I'm going to speak with the author of the book, BOTS Against Us, the ongoing Information War against the United States with the other Alan Silberberg.
Starting point is 00:01:45 It's a really in-depth interview. He's done so much. He worked with the DNC looking at the Podesta phishing email. They asked him what he thought about that. He's a pandemic security expert, cyber security expert, and he literally wrote the book on bots. There is so much important information in this interview that I couldn't cut it down. So it's going to be the show.
Starting point is 00:02:07 But for all the other headlines, check out our sister podcast, The Daily Beans. We have all the relevant news. Everything that flew under the radar. I mean, we do cover the COVID updates. The important, you know, what we think are important updates from COVID-19. We're going to be talking on this episode of Daily Beans comes out Monday morning Sunday
Starting point is 00:02:27 night if you're a patron and you get it ad-free if you're a patron. But we're going to be talking about Sullivan hiring his own lawyer in the Flynn case, the same lawyer who represented Kavanaugh during the confirmation hearings and also represented Hillary in the email thing. We're going to be talking about Pompeo failing to hand over documents to the Democratic lawmakers in the House about firing Linux, the Inspector General of the State Department, who was looking into his and run around Congress with a $8 billion of the Saudi arms sales. We're going to be talking about the US pulling out of the open skies
Starting point is 00:03:01 treaty. We have an interview with Security law professor about Trump trying to override governors and you know, 10 A and 1 A, the 10th Amendment, the 1st Amendment and how that impacts it. And also Kelly Loeffler donated a million dollars to a Trump super PAC, like they, I don't know, she's trying to distract us from the fact that she is an insider trader, insider trader. That sounds weird. We also have some great news about Devon Nunes. He was dealt a blow.
Starting point is 00:03:31 OAN's suit against Maddo got dropped. We have a lot of headlines in today's daily beans. So check that out, but for today, I wanted to really just focus on this really, really interesting interview. But along with all the stories that I just mentioned, well, there's also a story out this week from Business Insider that roughly half the Twitter accounts pushing to reopen America are bots. And joining me today to discuss his book called BOTS against us, the ongoing information war against the United States, is author and pandemic and cyber security expert Alan Silverberg.
Starting point is 00:04:11 Alan, thanks for joining me today. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, I figured if I was going to talk about a story that had to do with BOTS, I might as well bring on the person who wrote a book about it. Thank you. I'd like to talk about your book, but first I'd like your top line reaction to the reporting that came out from business insider that researchers at Carnegie Mellon suggests that bots are dominating the reopen America debate on Twitter. Does that surprise you? No, not at all. I think that the definition of bots is a broad definition, so you kind of have to be a little bit careful there. However, having said that, many of the same actors that were involved in trying to stir up the plot with
Starting point is 00:04:59 everything from Black Lives Matter protests to Blue Lives Matter protests, to Donald Trump rallies, to, you know, it's the same cast and characters, and it's the same bots. And so we're seeing Russian involvement. You're seeing Chinese involvement. You're seeing domestic players who are trying to agitate against each other. And there's a huge use of bots. I've seen it on Twitter just recently. Massive were right back to where we were at the 2016 levels in terms of bot involvement in politics. So yeah, and as it turns out, this was a
Starting point is 00:05:29 sweeping analysis from Carnegie Mellon. They looked at over 200 million tweets discussing COVID since January and found that roughly half of the accounts, including what they refer to as 62% of the thousand most influential retweeters appear to be bots. So I wanted to ask you, how can we recognize a bot? What is a bot? How do we recognize it? And how does that compare to other topics that you just brought up, Blue Lives Matter, Black
Starting point is 00:05:57 Lives Matter, which are apparently typically 10 to 20% bot activity? Well, the reason I mentioned those is because it's the same pattern of activity, the same kind of, you know, you basically, you have a bot network, you have a controller or a human person who's often also active in that bot network as a retreater or as an aggregator. And what happens is the bots are basically programmed
Starting point is 00:06:24 to find each other and to work with each other. And someone creates a bottom of me of 10 million accounts and they all have the same programming. They're going to act the exact same way. Some might have different ones. Like, there's like the angry bots. There's the bots who challenge you. There's the bots who insult you. There's the bots who agree with you and make you think you're there on your side.
Starting point is 00:06:45 There's the bots that just do nothing but name call and insult people. And then there's a whole other level of bots that are really clearly designed to stir up political dissent and create division amongst Americans. And a lot of, you know, we've been covering the Russia investigation now for a long time on this podcast. And we've done some great work. Thank you very much, thanks so much. But we've discovered some ways to tell tale signs
Starting point is 00:07:21 that something is a bot. A lot of times there's syntax that kind of gives it away. A lot of times they'll have no picture. Sometimes they'll have, they like to use dogs a lot. Sometimes they'll have, like their Twitter handle will be like Bob with a string of 12 numbers after. Yeah, so there's a whole bunch of, I mean, you just listed off a bunch of good ones,
Starting point is 00:07:45 but there's several other telltale signs, very clear ones actually. For example, someone pretending to be an American often will talk about Berbercuse a lot and how much they love football. But when you look at the pictures they're posting often, they're not from America, they're actually from some other country. Or they're writing in English, but as you said, the syntax is not correct. Or when you look at their numbers, they use comments instead of periods as decimal points. And so that's right away kind of tells you that you're dealing with someone not from America. And then there's like a whole other level where basically you can kind of test them a little bit and respond. And if they how they respond back to you, you can kind of test them a little bit and respond.
Starting point is 00:08:25 And if they how they respond back to you, you can see kind of how they're programmed. So like the ones that will automatically start insulting you, that's what they're actually programmed to do. The ones that are like kind of give you one or two or three word responses, obviously, that's all they can do. And then there's humans who are involved without as well so that you, you, it's very difficult sometimes to determine, you know, who's controlling who, like it's the bot controlling the human or the human controlling the bot.
Starting point is 00:08:54 We look for things that are often, like you said, telltale signs, like an account that's been recently created and is also only followed by other accounts that are recently created or only follows other accounts that are recently created. That's a big one. Another big one is, and it comes from 2009 on Twitter that only has, you know, 55 people following it, but they follow, like, you know, 3000 people. And they only, supposedly, they've been on just lurking on Twitter, but really they've been a bot that's been reused a few terms. And then people delete the, you know, oftentimes the accounts that aren't caught and aren't banned and aren't blocked will get reused.
Starting point is 00:09:40 So they'll get renamed, they'll get refreshed, and they'll delete the history from them, because I think that somehow that means no one can see it. And, but then there's also a pattern of, you know, instantly getting a bunch of likes, and instantly getting a bunch of retweets off of some really stupid insult someone else says to you, and then you realize, well gee, who's retweeting them? Who's liking them? And then you kind of fall into that whole rabbit hole, pardon me, of, you know, constantly chasing them because there's so many. Yeah, we were constantly, recently, somebody who I follow on Twitter, there's some movement to cancel Tony Stark, who's the actor who played Tony Stark.
Starting point is 00:10:26 Why can't I think of his name? He's got three names. I don't know. It's OK. Less than zero. Robert Downey Jr. Robert Downey Jr. This was his past, I failed it.
Starting point is 00:10:37 Yeah. They were, they wanted to cancel Robert Downey Jr. I can't believe I forgot him. I'm in love with him. Who, they're trying to get get canceled him because of his role in Tropic Thunder. Everyone's like, what? That is the weirdest thing.
Starting point is 00:10:53 They were looking at who was retweeting this and they were finding a lot of bot activity. It's just really interesting. You mentioned accounts that were just created or accounts that were created in 2009 that have two followers and follow 3000 people. I used to do a test. I would often, times accidentally engage with a bot and I still do it from time to time.
Starting point is 00:11:17 They're getting more sophisticated, but I would always ask what inning we sing take me out to the ball game. Oh, nice. Yeah, I do think like that as well, especially, especially when someone says they're like born in America, oh, really? Yeah. Because anyone who's born here, but you should, it's not going to be putting that in their bio. Right. Right. Although, I've, no, I know I want to. Now, well, the big one in 2016 was, I love Barbecue's, I love football.
Starting point is 00:11:48 Here's my, I'm a fan of, you name it. You name the college football team, right? And there'll be some picture of the some white American, blonde hair with their girlfriend watching the football game. In reality, they're late at night, they're also re-tweeting Russian media. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:10 Football and Russian media, I'm really into those. Exactly. It's a wonderful combination. But more seriously, though, there are bots involved in our lives and ways that most of us don't even think about. I mean, if you call the bank on the phone, you're dealing with a bot, basically.
Starting point is 00:12:24 You're dealing with a telephone bot, but you're dealing with a robotic software platform that's designed to handle inquiries and to respond in certain ways. Those are programmed in hopefully positive ways, hopefully you're getting the information you need and, you know, that they are helpful. However, that same exact technology can be used just as effectively in a negative way. And when it's done by a nation state in a paramilitary attack, especially in a country that has no defenses against it and has never dealt with it before,
Starting point is 00:12:56 basically you're just gonna overrun the population just like a virus. It's exactly like a, we did, in fact, 10 years ago in social media was just really getting huge. You know, there were a lot of talk about, could you track a virus or something like, you know, Ebola spread through social media? And it turns out that actually there are a number of studies that show that social media
Starting point is 00:13:20 can be a leading indicator of those types of crises because all of a sudden you start to hear about doctors rushing to the hospital or nurses doing double shifts or people with the sniffles in Chicago or you know and and if you did it in aggregate and you were actually listening you could you could kind of get ahead of some of those health kind of movements and and that's also true in politics that's's true in diplomacy. And unfortunately, if those types of tools are used on a populist that's not prepared for it, has never had any training and disinformation or in spotting fake media or propaganda. Many countries in Europe and Asia and Africa have gone through decades of this. So they literally had, you know,
Starting point is 00:14:05 they've gone to school and actually had classes like how do you determine a fake piece of information or not, you know, what's prop again and what's in here, we don't have anything like that because for so long, there really wasn't anything directed on that we could see in an immediate fashion. Now everything is 24-7 and everything is right in front of us and it's in our hands.
Starting point is 00:14:25 It's really in our hands, because you're holding a phone. And so when someone's on Facebook, and you're using it on their phone, the connection to that message that they're seeing is so visceral. And so if you magnify that by a billion people, that's how you get control of people's minds is is the use of those types of you're knowing that someone is more addicted to their phone when they're on Facebook messaging than they are when they're talking to the IRS. You know, the knowing that someone is way more addicted to Twitter when people are responding to their tweets and retweeting them
Starting point is 00:15:04 than when nobody's paying attention to that. Yeah. And speaking of us not being prepared, I mean, I know Ukraine was looking at us in 2016 like, guys, don't you see this? And this is especially true, like you said, in a country that's ill-prepared for it. But also, we're a country that is governed by an administration that welcomes it and may well even be funding it. And you know, through organizations like Siopson, Black Cube and Joel Zamol and that August
Starting point is 00:15:37 3rd meeting in Trump Tower and all that. If not funding it, then certainly willing collaborators and part of it. I mean, I'll get to this later when we talk about my book, but part of what I was talking about in my book really was this sort of this relationship between Russians and Americans who decided to collaborate to steal an election. And that happened on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and that happened in real time on Atlantic Ocean and that happened in real time on in real media and in social media and in emails and what's up charts and everything else and still happening. Yeah and speaking of your book that I wanted to get to that next. I wanted to first of all ask you
Starting point is 00:16:15 what inspired you to write it and and also what kind of misinformation bought traffic misinformation. Do you do you discuss? Do you highlight in your in your book? traffic misinformation. Do you discuss? Do you highlight in your in your book? Um, though what caused me to to write it actually was that I accidentally, um, in early 2016, um, uh, came across, you know, a series of botnets that were supporting Bernie Sanders. They were acting very suspicious and they suddenly, I had never once on Twitter mentioned Bernie Sanders. I never, I've never supported him. But I also never, it wasn't something like I never
Starting point is 00:16:51 said anything about about him. I never mentioned him. And then one day in like February or January of 2016, all these Bernie bots started following me in one day, like hundreds of accounts. And I got my attention and I started looking at some of these accounts and these were right away, it was very clear that they were not real, they were fake. I mean, they were just so many fake Bernie bot accounts.
Starting point is 00:17:20 And then separately from that, I got called in, I got called in to review the, I got called in by someone at the DNC in March of 2016 to review the email that Podesta had received that was their sort of initiated all the DNC hacking. The Google, the Google fishing email? Yeah, exactly. To see what my impression of it was and sort of what,
Starting point is 00:17:45 you know, how we would have reacted if we had gotten that email. And I mean, I mean, it was a very well-crafted fishing email, but it was also had a link in it that was some malicious link. And it was obvious that if you had looked, if anyone had, you know, a moment's notice, they would have been like, wait, this is probably not right. But someone who's getting three, four, five thousand emails a day, and they're the head of a campaign, and, and it's a Google reset thing saying, hey, reset your Google count. I mean, I don't know how many of us wouldn't fall for it. I guess is the question. Even, even with, you know, proper training. If you're depending on the heat of the moment, that's kind of how these things are worked. It's social engineering because they're getting in your head and they're using psychology to manipulate you, whether they're manipulating millions of people at once or one person at a time. And so the combination of the that of being asked to
Starting point is 00:18:39 be involved with that and then these Bernie bots, I basically just started paying very close attention to what was happening with the Russian involvement. And at that first, it was just with the social media. And then I started hearing Trump speeches and talking, hearing him talk about his love for Putin and whatever. And then when he made the speech and asked
Starting point is 00:19:04 Russia to hack Hillary's emails, to me, that was an active treason. I'm using that term in the wrong way I understand, because if we weren't technically in war, although Russia, since, has said that they attacked us as a military gesture through the GRU. And it was in court in the US federal court, they admitted that it as a military gesture through the GRU and it was in court in the US federal court, they admitted that it was a military move and that's why they shouldn't be held accountable for it when they'll DNC suit them.
Starting point is 00:19:33 Yeah, and Judge Sullivan, of course, asked the prosecutors in the Michael Flynn case. And this is when I'm not talking about what Trump said, but yes, but then also, I mean, it's been the, the trees and words been brought up a few times. Yeah, and but I mean, when I said it then, it was more like out of anger. And I had worked in the Clinton White House as a young, unfortunate enough to get a job, you know, while he, when he was president. And so I actually served under a real president. And I worked with, with, with real professionals. And I was with it was an incredible experience in my life and everyone I know who was part of that alumni and who's part of the Clinton team. I think would say the same thing even with all the lawsuits and all the craziness that went on.
Starting point is 00:20:17 You know that it was the business of the government and the business of the country was handled in an ethical way. And nobody, there weren't 100,000 people dying. I think that when Trump begged Russia to hack Hillary's emails to me, it was like, wow, this guy's like a Manchurian puppet. And he was, I kept struggling for the term for it to find it. The Manchurian Russian candidate. Like, what was the right way to describe it?
Starting point is 00:20:48 And then May of 2016, right before, the conventions happened, and it was right around the time that Trump was sort of declaring himself the unofficial nominee. All these Bernie bots that had been following me since January, all of a sudden in one day flipped to Trump bots. And I was traveling and I saw it happening on my mobile phone, but I couldn't like say
Starting point is 00:21:15 that my computer and do screenshots, unfortunately. So I would at that one moment when I could have like actually been like, hey, look, boom, but I got hundreds and hundreds of accounts switched in one day. Yeah. And I was in 2016, I was a Bernie supporter and all the hashtags like Dem Exit and all that was all Russian. Crooked DNC and all the people. All those efforts, the guy who is behind the CalXR,
Starting point is 00:21:45 that's because the CalX platform actually lives in Russia. I mean, you can't get more direct than that. Yeah, and here we are in California. You think, your man, that is a really good idea. And it plays on our desires to not be part of this Republican establishment, but then they turn the tables on you. Well, it's actually, it was never a good idea because it was all about dividing us. Oh, you know what I mean? I mean, it's appealing to the good nature of actual Democrats in California. As it's propaganda and it's stuff that we've never been exposed to in any kind of real way before.
Starting point is 00:22:24 We've heard about it and we've seen all on all these on the news growing up. We see it all these other totalitarian countries that we're using propaganda platforms to control their their their countries. And you know, we were always like, oh, that'll never happen here because of our laws and because we're open society and are you know, freedom of press. And now we have the press under assault. We have a government, at least a leader in the government who is willing to subvert himself to the demands of a foreign leader. Yeah. Well, and then I'm trying to say that nicely. I mean, I really believe there's a much stronger connection.
Starting point is 00:23:05 I wrote about this in my book. One of the things that really, really, truly bothered me when I started paying attention to all this in 2016 was we started seeing a parallel communication between the Russian, but the Kremlin itself, official Kremlin media outlets and groups like R.A.T. and Split Nick and some of their kind of like accolades around the world. That was timed almost precisely with what was coming
Starting point is 00:23:32 out of the Trump campaign in 2016. So for example, Donald Trump would make a tweet about something and five seconds later, the Kremlin would retweet it. Yeah, or the other way around where the Trump people would retreat it. Yeah. Or the other way around, where the Trump people would actually be taking messaging from the Russians. And then within seconds, they would be repeated and amplified on their end. And this happened daily throughout the campaign
Starting point is 00:23:57 on hundreds and hundreds of issues. And to me, it was very clear that what was happening was the Trump campaign was being controlled by Russia. And so when I wrote my book, I actually had an agent, I don't want to mention him, he's a very nice guy, who is one of the top agents in New York City and he literally was unable to get my book sold. And the reason was because he says, oh, there's more famous people who have stories
Starting point is 00:24:30 or, and it wasn't him saying, this is what the publishing houses were saying. Some of them were saying that who cares about the opinion of one's cyber security expert, they were waiting for the Mueller report to come out. So no one really wanted to kind of like make any moves. And then when it became clear that Mueller was being forced out and then his, the work that he had formed out to other agencies might also have been canned.
Starting point is 00:24:56 I decided to self-publish the book because I felt that it was extremely important for America to understand what is still going on today. And if you look at this coronavirus situation and the deaths is so heartbreaking. But the lies and the manipulation that we are now going through as a country is almost identical to the lies and manipulation that we went through in 2016, except now the virus is the target to germ. Yeah, and by a lot is what it seems. And I have to say, I'm, you know, a lot of, I think that you and I can probably share
Starting point is 00:25:37 a feeling of indication when the Mueller report dropped. Mine was volume two, yours was volume one. But it's actually both. You know what I mean? For sure. Because you had just spent all this time writing a book that nobody wanted to buy about bots and cybersecurity and troll farms, and then here is this 250 page volume of a Mueller report, which is just a tiny little tip of the iceberg, by the way, that outlines pretty
Starting point is 00:26:00 much everything that you were saying for the past year. And so. Yeah, and also while I was I people often to the the US intelligence community report that was issued in January 7th of 2017. So while Obama was still yeah while Obama was still president these all 17 intelligence agencies came together under one report and they issued a stunning, I think, those at 17 page report. And it was, I don't know, Alan. I'm not sure though, because, you know,
Starting point is 00:26:31 the CIA said they had a moderate degree of certainty and the FBI and the NSA said they had a high degree of certainty. No, no, no, that was in October of 2016, but in January, I know, I'm just, I'm just actually a full, no, I get it. But it was a full, it was a full, I was actually, I believe, the first time in history, or modern history,
Starting point is 00:26:53 that our intelligence agencies have issued such a report. And so, I mean, I've point people to that, because that was the pre-molar report. And that was the thing that was like very technical, and they didn't really name name so much, they definitely said here is what happened. Yeah yeah I think you know something that hurt a lot was the October 2016 headline from the New York Times you know that there was no the FBI has found no problem with Russia. But- They've blood on their hands now with Trump and the $100,000. It's the same, I mean.
Starting point is 00:27:29 Yeah. And now we're waiting for the counterintelligence volume, part five of the CISI, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report. Which of course, barge has got jammed up. So I think that not barge. So I burp. Yeah. And I think obviously's not barge. So I burr. Yeah. Um, um, and I think obviously there's some effort to try to muffle that report, but my guess is
Starting point is 00:27:49 it's going to frame its way to the light of the day just because of it's bipartisan and ultimately someone's going to leak it if it's not. It'll come out. Mark Warner, Mark Warner released it to just like Diane Feinstein released a fusion GPS transcripts against the wishes of. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that the problem right now is that right now we still have Fox News, which is serving as the main propaganda network in America. And 25 hours a day is brainwashing. A good portion of this country.
Starting point is 00:28:19 They're literally being brainwashed. They're being led to believe that a virus that can kill you simply by walking outside is not dangerous. And, you know, and to that, I say, well, if you've ever talked to someone who's had this disease, this virus, you're going to hear a completely different story. You know, or, and I think that the divisions that are being caused here, if you look at Brexit, Brexit is a wonderful example because it happened at the same time. It was the same players, the same exact style bot network, the same type of divisionary language and rhetoric. Now Britain is floating all by itself. They basically have no hope of recovering their economy.
Starting point is 00:28:57 They're going to have years and years and years of pain. And for what? Because Putin thought that this was a great idea to split UK from the EU and also at the same time to break the United States. And it seems like with Trump as president, we have the second happening also. Yeah. Yeah. Putin can be nothing but happy with what's happening. Yeah., so they're using the virus. They're using the virus to stir up division. These protests that are out there, these fake protests, these these protests that are are,
Starting point is 00:29:32 they're not even protests. They're, they're rallies disguised as protests. And I did a whole thing on Twitter two years ago that got something like a million impressions was I basically wrote a short, you know, thread, including multiple live links showing how Trump pays for crowds to come to his rallies and buses people in and then there's a whole side business of it. They give them they give them a hundred bucks and then if they sell some extra red hats, they make more money.
Starting point is 00:30:08 And I guarantee you that the same people who were by being busted to these rallies eight months ago are being given giant American flags and are being paid to show up in Michigan and in California and other places. And in California, we have 40 million people and you got maybe what, 500 people protesting, but they get a lot of media attention because there's some right-wing media agitators who want to see a revolution. They're trying to form a revolution and they
Starting point is 00:30:41 think that something like this coronavirus and the rules and people have an aware mass and not have, you know, keep a distance and all of this. Somehow that that invades their right to, you know, I don't know what, to what, have a, have a cheeseburger while they're getting in her cut. I don't know. I don't know. But it's gonna, I mean, it's gonna keep going as we wait for a vaccine. I know I saw a report that 20 over 70% of Republicans to watch Fox News believe that the vaccine is a vehicle that Bezos and Bill Gates came up with to inject tracking chips into
Starting point is 00:31:17 you. And that's the case. Well, well, that's the case, then, well, maybe they could just stop using their phones. That's what I said. The best part is they're tweeting this from their iPhone. But, okay, but Steve Jobs is totally safe or Tim Apple, excuse me. I think that the reality right now is that we're being subjected to a controlling, you know, Trump is trying to control the government as much as possible. They've destroyed the EPA.
Starting point is 00:31:46 They've gutted the rules of the EPA. They've got it in the Clean Air Act. They've got it in the Clean Water Act. And now under the guise of this COVID pandemic, they're gutting all these industrial rules that have guided America for decades. Oh, sure. Worker safe, yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:02 Well, they're going after social security. And so in a way, in a way, I don't know how much you know about Russian history, but when when the Soviet Union fell apart and you know, there was a few years where it was complete chaos. day oligarchs became oligarchs. They were KGB thugs and they basically took the economic, the division and the economic problems and they forced companies to sell to them on pennies at the dollar or they were just steel companies outright and then that's how they became these rich billionaire oligarchs. They're still KGB thugs, they're just billionaire oligarchs. And I think what Trump is trying to do here is replicate that. And if you look at what's happening with how many people are unemployed,
Starting point is 00:32:52 40 million people are unemployed now, and all these businesses are filing for bankruptcy or going out of business, they're trying to close the post office. Now, why is that? Is that because of mail-in ballots? That's one thing because you can't really argue about mail-in ballots. But the real estate portfolio of the U.S. Postal Service is gigantic. It's prominent, you know, real estate in every major city, every small city in America. And so if they were somehow able to
Starting point is 00:33:25 privatize that, what do you think that would be about? That would be one giant land grab. small city in America. And so if they were somehow able to to privatize that, what do you think that would be about? That would be one giant land grab. And so I think it would look like the prisons, it would look exactly. So I think we have to be very careful here, because we're looking at a parallel and nobody in our media right now is willing to address that because nobody wants to call out the Russian puppet for being a Russian puppet. Yeah a Russian puppet. Yeah, we do, and you do, so thank you for that. Yeah, thank you.
Starting point is 00:33:49 And you should all your work. I mean, you've been phenomenal, like covering all this and I think, and then helping to elucidate the information. I hope we've helped a little. And I hope people will check out your book. It's called BOTS against us. And you're, you know, you're a pandemic. Cybersecurity expert, Alan Silverberg.
Starting point is 00:34:13 Thank you for speaking with me today. I really appreciate it. All right, everybody. That is our show for this week, our penultimate show. Please join us next week for the final episode of Mullershi Road. And everyone please subscribe to the Daily Beans where we will continue to bring all the Mueller news to you. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. And we look forward to seeing you over on that feed. So please take care of
Starting point is 00:34:37 yourselves and take care of each other. Don't miss the final episode of Mullershi Road next Sunday. I've been your host A.G. and this is Mullershi wrote. Mullershi wrote is executive produced and directed by A.G. and Jordan Coburn with engineering and editing by Mackenzie Mazell and Starburn's industries. Our marketing manager, production and social media direction is by Amanda Reader, fact checking your research by A.G., Jordan Coburn, and Amanda Reader, and our knowledgeable listeners. Our web design and branding are by Joao Reader with Moxie Design Studios and our website is mullersheerope.com. Hi, I'm Dan Dunn, host of What We're Drinkin' With Dan Dunn, the most wildly entertaining
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Starting point is 00:35:40 Boom is right Academy Award winner, Allison Janney. As you can see,'s just love this show. How cool is that? Hey, this is Scottie Pippin, and you're listening to the Dan Dunn show. And wait, hold on. The name of the show is what? Alright, sure. Scottie Pippin momentarily forgot the show's name, but there's a first time for everything.
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Starting point is 00:36:45 So be like Dedevantiste friends and listen to what we're drinking with Dan Dunn, available wherever you get your podcasts. M-S-O-W-Media. you

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