The President's Daily Brief - May 5th, 2022. The CDC Has Been Tracking Your Location. China is Moving in the Pacific.

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

It’s May 5th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. I’m your host and former CIA Officer Bryan Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. First up, the CDC was tracking you during the pandemic. Your second brief, China is making a serious move in the Pacific, establishing a military relationship with the Solomon Islands. And as always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. First, some breaking news out of Ukraine. America is helping kill Russian Generals using US intelligence. Second, Joe Biden said yesterday that he’s finally getting the federal deficit under control. All up next on the President’s Daily Brief. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's May 5th. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. The reef you're about to hear is in the same spirit of the actual President's Daily Brief, which is a top secret summary of the most critical events in the past 24 hours, all delivered to the president each day by the nation's spymasters. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I am your spy and this is your brief. Here's what we're going to be talking about this morning. First up, the CDC was tracking you during the pandemic. or should I say, tracking your phone, all to see whether you are complying with COVID rules. We're going to talk about that. Your second brief, China is making a serious move in the Pacific, establishing a military relationship with the Solomon Islands. We'll discuss why that's making leaders in Australia and the U.S. very nervous. And as always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar.

First, some breaking news out of Ukraine. America is helping kill Russian generals using U.S. intelligence. We'll talk about how the Kremlin is probably taking that news this morning. Second, Joe Biden said yesterday that he's finally getting the federal deficit under control. It's a dubious claim at best and designed to get the attention of one very special senator, I'll explain. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. Your first piece of intel this morning, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the CDC, well, they were watching you during the pandemic, in part to see if you were following COVID rules.

That's the finding of a new report out this morning, which came from internal CDC documents. And what the material showed was that public health officials bought surveillance data from tens of millions of cell phones at the cost of about a half a million dollars. Now, before I explain the details of what the CDC was looking for, we need to understand where this data came from. The CDC partnered with a company called SafeGraph. Now, this is a company that collects electronic data that you leave behind as you go throughout your daily life. It's called your digital exhaust, and I want you to think of it like your car leaving behind an engine's exhaust. here's how it works. If you're like most Americans these days, you get up in the morning and you check your phone,

your email and your text messages. And then you go to your favorite websites for news, maybe your favorite podcast, which is obviously me. All right, joking aside, you then drive to work, you keep checking your phone, maybe for lunch, you go outside and you check a few more websites, and then eventually you leave work, grab some stuff at the grocery store, and you get home and maybe watch a movie. Now, all of that, everything you did on your phone that day, from waking, up until going to bed. All of that leaves an electronic signature. It creates data, the whole time. Now, sometimes that data is collected from a website that you've browsed, or maybe like

your cell phone carrier like Verizon, or especially these days, it's from apps that you downloaded on your phone. Now, you often don't know it, but those apps are tracking you, where you go for how long, even when you're not using them. That's all called your digital exhaust, and it's vacuumed up by lots of different companies like Verizon or those app developers. In turn, many of those companies take that data and they sell it to other companies like SafeGraph. These folks are called data aggregators or data brokers. And like the name suggests, they take all that data from all those companies and they find patterns. They look at your daily life and then they sell it. They sell you. Now here's the crazy part. These patterns don't just tell companies what you did in the past or who you were

in the past. It tells them who you're probably going to be in the future too. That's because humans are creatures of habit. We stick with routines. So whoever has your data can predict with pretty good accuracy what you're going to be doing at any given hour at any given place. At any rate, these data aggregators or brokers then sell that predictive data for a lot of money. Hundreds of billions of dollars, in fact. The exact number is a little bit tricky to pin down, in part because there are thousands and thousands of data broker companies all around the world. But the point here's this. Your cell phone is a surveillance device. And what it reports, even if you don't know it, is very valuable to lots and lots of people, including the CDC. So what we know this morning is that

they wanted all that digital exhaust for tens of millions of phones, which is really tens of millions of people. And they wanted it for over 21 different purposes. So, let me just touch on three. First, they wanted to know if people were complying with COVID curfews. Now, you may not know it, but your digital exhaust is geolocated, meaning your cell phone is giving away your exact location at all times. In this case, the CDC document said that they were able to track people hourly, specifically in curfew zones.

All right, let's move on to one of the other 21 reasons that they wanted your digital exhaust. they were wanting to count the number of visits to collaborating pharmacies, and that would give them a better sense of vaccine monitoring, compliance. In other words, how many doses, which people, and so forth. Third, they tracked patterns of people visiting schools and houses of worship. They didn't specify why they wanted that data, but the presumption here is that those places could potentially be identified as super spreader locations if, in fact, an outbreak occurred.

Now, those are just a few of the things related to COVID that they were after. But the CDC also wanted cell phone data for things that weren't related to COVID. And that included, quote, research points of interest for physical activity, such as parks and gyms and weight management businesses. It's not clear why they wanted that data and they didn't respond to a request for comment. So if all of this surveillance makes you a little bit nervous, well, let me tell you, what a defender of the CDC's would say to your concern. First, the collection and the analysis of all that data was for your own good, for the good of the country to stop the spread. Second, they would say, the data that they bought was all anonymized, which is just a fancy way of saying. The data didn't

have any specific names of the people associated with the data. It was anonymized. All right, so let's talk about that second response, the anonymous nature of the data. What privacy researchers can tell you and what I can tell you from my past intelligence work is that this anonymous data line is absolutely absurd. The data can and is pretty easily reassembled to confirm exactly who the data belonged to. And that leaves the other question about doing this for your own good. And that's what a president would have to wrestle with this morning. So I want you to imagine you're in the White House and I want you to think about this. Do you trust the CDC or our public health officials to handle this data with care.

Do you think that they'll follow whatever rules or laws are in place that tell them what they can or can't do with this kind of personal information? Now, as you answer those questions, I want you to remember this. About two weeks ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIH was asked what he thought of a court throwing out the CDC's mask mandate. Do you remember his response? He said it was, quote, disturbing. He added that things like mask mandate,

should be decided as a public health issue by public health organizations like the CDC, and that COVID policies are, quote, a public health matter, not a judicial matter. His logic then is that if the CDC wants to do something because of public health, the courts need to back off. There should be no oversight in Fauci's mind because an attack on him is an attack on science. So I think that this helps answer the question that you're wrestling with. Can you trust that the CDC won't abuse or misuse the cell phone data of tens of millions of Americans? I'm going to leave it up to you to answer that question, but it's certainly something that we should talk about. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari.

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And no more chat with Danny from accounts. Your life deserves music. Your music deserves both. Find your perfect product at bows.com. Your second brief this morning, we're going to switch gears and go to national security. China is expanding its footprint deeper into the Pacific Ocean. They've just inked a secret deal with the Solomon Islands, which said about 1,000 miles from Australia. The exact details of the deal haven't been released and won't be, according to the governments involved.

They're saying it's a private matter. Now, that in and of itself is worrying if you care about China expanding ever closer to our allies in New Zealand and Australia, and obviously and eventually towards Hawaii. But there's a leaked version of the agreement circulating, and it says China is allowed to dock its naval ships in the country and resupply them. It also says that China can send in Chinese police to help protect the safety of Chinese citizens and Chinese-backed development projects in the islands. So this agreement, by the way,

stems from tensions between the Solomon Islands and Australia, which normally provides police and security assistance when the government requests. it? Well, there was a series of major protests last November, and the native people were targeting Chinese-owned businesses and burning them down or trashing them. Why? Because they were upset at how Chinese citizens were taking over commerce in parts of their country and denying natives' jobs and the chance to build a business. Well, the Australians came in, and they helped quell the initial unrest, and that was back in November. But the Solomon Islands Prime Minister was unsatisfied. There's not exactly a lot of details what happened. But regardless, he went knocking on the door of Beijing,

which in turn very quickly agreed to assist in maintaining social order. That's part of that circulating agreement. Obviously, this has caused a lot of concern, certainly in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, but the island's government has repeatedly said that it will not allow China to establish a military base. But again, it refuses to release the text of the actual agreement. And whenever a journalist presses, they get her wrong. or actually banned from the country. So if you were the president this morning, I'd offer up a few key takeaways and a few recommendations.

First, we are clearly in the early stages of China's march into the Pacific, and closer to not just our friends in Australia or New Zealand, but more importantly, Hawaii. The threat is real, although it's early. Now, recall that China has the world's largest navy by numbers of ships, but it lacks overseas bases, except for one in the Middle East. But by getting a toll hold and a solemn, Islands, that number changes to two. And that number changes again if other small island nations

in the area, like the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu and Kiribati, if they see that the Solomon Islands start getting showered with cash and gifts, well, they'd want the same. That means that we would be wise to rekindle our relationships with these countries and listen to their concerns, because that's part of what's driving the Solomon Islands into the hands of the Chinese. To explain, people each year die, they accidentally hit unexploded bombs that we dropped or housed on the islands during World War II. In fact, just a few weeks ago, there was a man who was digging a hole for a septic tank, and he hit one, and he was killed instantly, and his brother who was helping him later died in a hospital. So my final recommendation is that beyond listening, we need to reestablish our intelligence networks throughout the islands.

We need eyes and ears on what these governments are doing and thinking. We need access to the secret documents that they're signing or considering signing. That intelligence is the early warning indicator for what China's up to. And it allows us to strike back through, well, various means. Spring is the season everyone refreshes everything except their blinds. People put it off because they think it's complicated. But at blinds.com, we've spent 30 years proving it's not. Right now, you can save big during the Spring Cyber Monday sale.

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Put these two on your radar. First, breaking news that the United States has been helping to assassinate Russian generals in Ukraine. To explain, the U.S. intelligence community is providing intel to Ukrainian forces, who in turn have executed at least 12 Russian generals. That number of 12 generals, by the way, is without precedent. modern times. It's an absolute slaughter. All right, let's put aside what we think of Putin, who to be clear here is the aggressor. I have briefed you before on the dangers of providing tactical and operational intelligence to the Ukrainians, that it might escalate this

conflict right up to and maybe even over Moscow's red lines. That means that as of this morning, we're continuing to probe to find the point just before Russia will strike back in U.S. interests in Europe or attack the homeland with some sort of cyber or kinetic strike. The question this morning is whether killing their generals is the final thing that crosses the Kremlin's red lines. The frightening answer is we don't know. And frankly, in my view, that is wildly dumb. But, but here we are. And now we wait, probably a few days or weeks. And that's when we'll find out if Joe Biden went too far. I'll be watching for this very closely. Your second story on the radar, President Biden is taking credit this morning for lowering deficits

and paying down to the national debt. the first administration to do so in six years. Biden's claims are part of an effort to convince the American people and the run-up to the mid-term elections that he is serious about our growing national debt and he wants to tackle inflation. But what he left unsaid is that he's trying to woo a very important U.S. Senator with all of this happy talk, but more on that in a moment. Let's look at the facts. Biden correctly said that the U.S. Treasury Department is going to pay down $26 billion in debt this quarter, and that's very good. But to be clear, we still would have a balanced budget. We're still looking at an annual deficit in the trillions. And our total

national debt, by the way, stands at over $30 trillion. But Biden's trying to make the point here that he's steering the ship in generally the right fiscal direction by paying down a small slice of that very big debt. But is he? A couple of things to consider. First, Biden forgot to mention that he's asking Congress for $4.7 trillion for his buildback better program. Now, that's currently stuck on Capitol Hill, but it shows that if he could get his way, he'd be spending a whole lot more if he could. The second problem with Biden's statements is that while it's true that the Treasury is going to pay down $26 billion in this quarter, they're going to borrow $182 billion next quarter. So if you do the math, there's no real debt reduction on balance. So that should make you ask,

what's really going on here? Well, there is a very important senator that Joe Biden needs to have on his side. His name is Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and he is one of the two key senators who is a Democrat, but oftentimes votes against his party's wishes, or at least sometimes does. And at this moment, he's objecting to Biden's build-back better plan. Now, Manchin says that he's opposed because of what it would do to the deficit. So let's see if Biden's claims and peculiar math change Joe Manchin's opinions. For what it's worth, it didn't impress the committee for a responsible federal budget, which is a nonpartisan watchdog organization. They called Biden's previous statements on this matter highly misleading.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your morning brief. Thanks as ever for following and subscribing to the President's Daily Brief on all major podcast platforms like Apple and Spotify. I am so incredibly grateful. And as always, we close out the show reminding each other of why we are here, talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. American. It's from John chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Today.