All right, everybody, welcome back to another T-Rex Talk.
This is an interview episode, and I have with me on the show a friend of mine.
We've talked together for years on the internet.
We have yet to meet in person.
It's on my to-do list.
Every time we go out to Colorado to visit family, I think about dropping you aligned.
But Vlad, if you would introduce yourself and tell the folks a little bit about you.
Yeah, hey, I'm Vlad Sei, I'm the owner and founder of Terminal Armament.
I'm 22 years old, and yeah, the company mainly focuses on making communications and software
to find radio equipment to help people preserve their privacy and freedom.
Yeah, well, it's great having you on the show.
One of the things that I have really appreciated about you is I love the radio space, the decentralized
communication stuff, and I have really appreciated you, a bunch of other guys too.
There's a whole collection of folks that have basically taken that next step beyond ham
radio into something that is a little bit more modern, has a little bit more, I don't
know, I don't even know the best way to describe it, but a little more practical application.
And I think that you've done a lot, and you have a product, an actual product that you
have released.
So can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, so the main product that we released a little while ago, like late last year, is
called the SDR stick.
And basically, the history behind that is when we were first starting out, one of the
things we started focusing on a little bit is software-defined radios, and specifically
the RTL-SDR dongle, simply because, you know, for a variety of reasons, maybe we can talk
about that a little bit later, why software-defined radio might be a good thing for people looking
for certain capabilities to get into.
And then the RTL-SDR was just basically the cheapest option, or at least one of the cheaper
good options that you can get to kind of dip your toes in and get some capabilities.
And we were selling those for a little while.
Yeah, generally speaking, like 30 bucks.
Yeah, 30 bucks.
For those of you that don't already have one, and it's a great way to dip your toe in,
and visually see wide swaths of spectrum.
I found that to be one of the most educational tools, and just a great way to learn more
about the radio space.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, obviously it's definitely an actual useful tool, so to speak.
But I have also found it really useful for the educational side of things to actually
be able to, like you were saying, visually see the frequency spectrum as stuff is popping
up.
But so we were selling those for a little while, and since we are mainly marketed more
towards the tactical niche, I guess you could say, there is a few problems with the RTL-SDR,
maybe not necessarily problems, but just things that we could potentially make better to fit
that market more and fit the needs that people were having.
And that's really kind of where the SDR stick came about from, basically.
And so those three were the first one was durability.
And the RTL-SDR really just meant and designed to be a USB dongle that you plug into your
computer, has a USB connector on one end, an SMA connector on the other end.
Not really meant to be something that you use outdoors or in any kind of, particularly
inclement weather or anything like that.
USB connector isn't the most stable and rugged as far as connectors go.
And so that was kind of the first thing to solve, so we decided, okay, let's put that
in an extrude aluminum enclosure, get some end caps, get a custom connector to use for
the USB that is IP rate.
I think that particular connector is IP67.
So definitely water resistant for any practical use that you're going to be using that for.
The second thing was to actually improve kind of the functionality and what you could do
with the hardware a little bit.
Because if you're going from, let's say, something like a quote unquote, hard word of
fine radio, like you're a Baufane, you're just some sort of handheld radio like that,
and you're scanning around a little bit with that.
And then you step up to something like an RTL-SDR, the 2.5 megahertz of bandwidth that it can
see is definitely a large jump.
But in the scale of specifically even slightly more expensive SDRs like the HackRF, 2.5 megahertz
can be a little bit limiting for some applications.
And so that was kind of one of the other things that we wanted to solve is maybe take that
and expand a little bit out.
And so the decision that was made there is like, hey, instead of just having a single
RTL-SDR, let's have two.
And if you're trying to do something like C20 megahertz bandwidth at the same time, definitely
better off to get something like a HackRF than to try to stick 10 RTL-SDRs into USB hub.
But one of the advantages of having two independent tuners is that you can actually use the two
independent tuners as kind of for, let's say, parallel processing tasks.
So you can have one of the tuners doing some specific tasks, maybe listening to ADSB transmissions
from planes, and then you can have one of the other tuners doing something not just completely
different but also in a completely different chunk of the frequency spectrum.
For instance, something like that, a setup like that could be useful for detecting and
finding crossband repeaters where maybe the input frequency is somewhere on VHF and the
output frequency is somewhere on UHF.
And even if you have some sort of high-end SDR that can see a few hundred megahertz of
the frequency spectrum at a time, you're not going to be able to see that unless you actually
have two separate tuners.
So that was kind of the second issue that we wanted to solve and kind of provide maybe
a little bit more capability than a single RTL-SDR could have.
And then the third one was to try to help out a little bit with some of the software
limitations because of course, being software-defined radio, all of the functionality that you're
getting is basically from the software that you use with it.
And there's definitely a plethora of software for really basic scanning around, listening
to AM and FM stuff.
But as you get into perhaps more complicated use cases and specifically things designed
for let's say around Android phones, your software options basically decrease a little
bit.
So the thought process behind that was like, hey, maybe we can use a little bit of funding
from this to try to develop some software to that's not just specific for the SDR stick
but also can do some other stuff just with a single RTL-SDR and also potentially donate
to some open source projects that we like.
And that's still definitely in the works.
We have a kind of really basic demonstration script that's up on the terminal armament
GitHub that does a little bit of the basic stuff that we want to maybe work into a little
bit more later.
But yeah, that's definitely still in the works and those were kind of the three big,
I guess you could say driving factors and the design philosophy behind that.
So you mentioned a couple of different use cases but for anyone listening to the podcast
who isn't really aware of what an SDR, a software defined radio gets you.
It is basically a modern radio where instead of a whole bunch of analog filters and tuning
devices, you actually look at a swath of the radio spectrum like it is digital data.
So you can see multiple different things at the same time and you can visualize it.
And being able to do that, being able to have complete control over the device and tune
into specific frequencies digitally as opposed to with actual analog filters means with the
same device you can listen to those ADSB transponders actually see air traffic.
Then you can go down and you can demodulate VHF, handheld radio traffic, demodulate UHF
radio traffic, listen in on emergency radio broadcasts, you can even listen in on FM.
Just one radio receiver that with the right software can do basically everything that
everything that you want to do with any other or dedicated radio device.
And if you have to, as you pointed out, all kinds of new possibilities open up.
The only limitation at this point is probably that software space.
And of course there's a bit of a limitation also as far as just what I can do by myself.
I'm trying at the moment to balance and juggle a lot of things.
But yeah, the software development stuff is something that I would like to pursue a little
bit more.
But also as far as some different open source projects, one of the ones that I have really
found extremely useful is SDR++.
I believe that's being developed almost entirely by one guy.
I don't remember where he is, but yeah, I think he's just some college student.
And as far as SDR software goes, really fantastic, some of the stuff that he's doing.
There's like a standalone fully released cross platform desktop version that has a ton
of plugin support.
And there's also, I think he has recently released an Android beta to where you can
actually run SDR++ basically the desktop version on Android devices, which is really cool
simply for like the plugin support.
And I think actually at the moment, at least last I talked to him, they're working through
a little bit of legal stuff to try to get a variety of digital decoders inside of the
software because that's an interesting thing with some of the digital standards like DMR
and P25.
If the encoders are proprietary, then you've got to get licenses to even use them to decode
stuff.
But if they can properly do that, then that will be really the first piece of software
that can actually decode digital radio on Android, which is a pretty cool possibility.
Yeah, the fact that you can have a really flexible device, small, portable and extremely
capable, not only is it, you know, in some ways I really like very specific mission specific
devices that only do one thing and they do that thing really well so that the makers
could optimize them and you're never going to try to use it for the wrong thing.
That's only for when you absolutely, positively know what you're going to need to do and know
that you're never going to need to adapt.
When you're in less certain situations, having the ability to adapt is immensely valuable.
And so I'm really excited to see what comes of both the feedback from people who start
to use the device and start to take it with it and start to discover stuff that previously
has been really complicated and tricky to do, like demodulating crossband receiver stuff.
Just what other new possibilities come about when you have two separate tuners.
And yeah, what about demodulating analog broadcast and turning them back into sound, demodulating
or decoding digital broadcast like DMR, P25.
What about detrunking other radio platforms?
What about decrypting?
Is this stuff that's potentially on the horizon either for, let's not say you.
Are these things that are on the horizon just for the overall radio community?
Yeah, I mean, trunking capability for software to find radio stuff is already there.
There's a variety of platforms.
The one that I prefer to use is SDR trunk.
And so that will allow you with some sort of software to find a radio dongle to listen
into and basically, yeah, listen into those trunk radio systems.
If you are using the RTLSTR, which is something else that the SDR stick can help with, since
you do have a somewhat limited bandwidth with the RTLSTR, what some people often like to
do is have a single tuner listening to what's called the control channel on the trunk radio
system, which is basically the channel that is listening to the entire system and dynamically
assigning virtual talk groups to actual frequencies to actually be able to maximize the limited
amount of frequency space that some of those systems have.
So if you are using something like the RTLSTR, you might be better off having something
that has two tuners, so you can have one listening to the control channel and the other one's
basically hopping around and listening as frequencies and as different information pops
up.
Yeah, as far as listening to the trunk systems, that's something that's already there.
Decrypting things on the fly, obviously, you're not going to, as far as like, well, yeah,
I guess that's, you know, are you talking about?
It's a complicated topic, yeah.
Do you know, just decrypting on the fly or also like cracking encryption and then decrypting
on the fly?
Because I think, right, I think, I do think that there are ways to where, you know, to
use to where, or maybe maybe a few programs that you could kind of cobble together to
where you actually could.
If you had, if you had keys, let's say it was your own radio network and you wanted
to kind of like listen in with an SDR at some sort of base or home location or whatever,
for some reason, instead of using a radio, I'm sure you could put a few things together
to actually be able to decrypt that kind of traffic if you had the keys as far as actually
cracking encryption on the fly.
Especially with things like, you know, if the radio system is using AES or some, you know,
some sort of equivalent modern encryption, you're not going to be able to do that.
But I believe that there actually has been some progress made with being able to crack
vulnerable encryption standards, for instance, like DES on the fly, being able to actually
listen to the traffic, get the information, you know, maybe offload that onto some more
powerful computer that can take a couple of minutes or maybe a couple of hours to actually
crack that encryption and then go back, plug that in and listen in.
I think one of the pieces of software that people have used for that is Universal Radio
Hacker.
I have been meaning to get that set up on my computer for a little while now.
I think it's just from looking at the GitHub, it seems like a really cool piece of technology
and something I want to mess around with in the future, definitely.
Yeah, it's one of these things where in the computer cyber security space, there is a
lot of focus on encryption and encryption standards and people testing various encryption
algorithms to make sure that they are in fact secure.
They haven't been salted or manipulated in any way.
And I'm not aware of folks doing that in the radio space too much.
I'm sure that on the military side, there's a lot of that.
I'm sure that on the commercial side, there's a little bit of that.
But I'm not aware of people testing various, let's say, DMR hand-helds.
And for those of you who are listening, we know that ham radio is not supposed to have
any encrypted transmissions whatsoever.
But a lot of the same hand-helds, digital radios that are used for amateur radio band,
a lot of those can also be used on business bands.
And on business bands, whether you have your own frequencies or itinerant frequencies,
you can encrypt.
So a lot of the hand-helds that people are using for ham radio stuff like the AnyTone
hand-helds or some of the Hitteria hand-helds, a lot of those have encryption enabled because
that's something that also works in a business band scenario.
And so I wonder just how much scrutiny there is on some of those different manufacturers
like AnyTone as to what their encryption implementation is like, how hard it is to crack the 40-bit
encryption that's standard on most of those, how solid the AES-256 implementation actually
is on these hand-helds.
It wasn't done well or did they just copy some random code off of someplace.
If these were applications doing stuff on the web, we'd probably have security research
messing with them all the time.
But I am just not aware of much of this stuff happening in the radio space.
So it's very cool and interesting.
Yeah, and that's one of the ways that specifically the radio space is interesting because it does
specifically when you get down into the actual layer one and layer two of stuff like actual
physical and networking implementations of stuff, even from an information security perspective,
there's actually, relatively speaking, a fairly small amount of people who are actually interested
enough in RF and skilled enough with RF stuff to even want to tinker at that low level.
And so yeah, there really isn't too much.
There was one white paper and I think the individual or one of the individuals who put
that together also did a DEF CON talk about it five or so years ago about actually some
vulnerabilities with P25 specifically.
And that actually is a really interesting paper to read and talk to listen to.
And some of the stuff he points out most of it is with trunk systems.
But one of the things that he goes into there that I think is really interesting specifically
looking at the documentation behind P25 is that it was developed basically as a public
safety standard moving away from analog and then encryption was basically, or not just
encryption, but security was basically slapped on top of that.
Right.
And so it wasn't really built from the ground up with security in mind.
And he goes into some more of the vulnerabilities on that side.
As far as DMR, I'm not entirely sure.
I haven't seen too much research as far as DMR, but that is also definitely something
that I would like for the company to do in the future a little bit is find some way to
where we can actually do that kind of in-depth research, find what people are interested in.
Okay, maybe there's a decent amount of people that are interested in, oh, what kind of vulnerabilities
does P25 have?
And then we can get a variety of radios and then dig in all the way down to the hardware
and packet level and stuff and really kind of bring that stuff to light.
I think that it would definitely be useful information for not just our space, but also
perhaps in a lot of the commercial and public safety world as well.
So here's the question.
How did you get interested in this?
Because this is, as you mentioned, kind of a niche thing.
And not only is this, not only are there not very many people doing this in the hobbyist
area, it feels like people who are interested in radio security in a hobbyist, from a hobbyist
perspective is a brand new thing for, I don't know, just the last...
5 to 10 years in some ways.
If there were people doing this sort of work in the past, it was generally directly for
Motorola or directly for Verizon or big telecom carriers.
There's plenty of very advanced digital communication work being done with a security perspective,
but it's being done in the commercial space.
In the hobbyist space, it feels like this is an extremely recent thing.
How did you get into it?
Man, so I think, yeah, specifically kind of the intersection between technology and the
firearms world.
And this is something that I had talked a little bit more in depth about on the redacted podcast.
But basically, I started getting into, I guess, kind of the tech side of things, maybe in
my early teens started off interested in music production, got into programming and software
development from that kind of got into the information security world and hacking in that
entire space.
And then from that point, I think, around that time, I ended up getting into kind of the
tactical and the gun world.
I was working at a nylon manufacturing company at the time that was working in the tactical
space and I also had a couple of friends at the moment that were starting to take me out
shooting and stuff.
And it's definitely something...
It hasn't been something that I grew up around, like my parents weren't anti-gunned by any
means, but it just wasn't something that we were around that was part of our household
or family or anything like that.
And so I definitely kind of took a bit of a deep dive into that world for a couple of
years.
And then after that job, I was kind of just thinking like, okay, is there something that
I can do that's kind of a combination of these two things?
And I think at that point, I was slowly starting to realize, hey, maybe there is some area
of overlap between some parts of the tech world and the security world and then also
gun culture, firearms, the tactical world.
And I probably honestly didn't even have the full realization or even the idea that I do
now of what that intersection might be.
I think at the time it was a lot more...
What's you're getting yourself into?
Yeah, I think at the time it was a lot more basic like, oh, hey, people are maybe getting
into radios.
Well, I know a little bit about technology, radios are technology, right?
I know a little bit about guns and stuff, definitely very little at the time.
Hey, maybe I can do something that's a combination of those two.
And I mean, and also one of the things that I will definitely say is that T-Rex was definitely
a huge influence on me in those...
Obviously not just in terms of the tactical world, but also like radio stuff.
I think somewhere in kind of like the early stages of the company is when you had released
that one radio video on YouTube.
And I think that was kind of a long...
Right around the time where I was getting more in depth into that.
But even just in the beginning in my kind of diving into, I guess we could say the tactical
world, right?
And I just think that it was really cool that my introduction to that wasn't like, oh, we
grew up hunting, you know, grew up around shotguns, maybe slowly got into some more of
this stuff and kind of was...
As I know, some people have who grew up around that stuff, you know, slowly getting more into
that I guess you could say the more advanced or maybe gun culture 3.0 or 4.0 and stuff,
right?
My introduction basically was, you know, seeing a video of Lucas running around at night
with nods, right?
And I don't remember who's...
I think it was that one big night vision video and I'm like, wow, that's so cool, right?
And so it was definitely an interesting and cool introduction, I guess you could say,
um, into that entire world.
That's very kind of you to say.
I've got to say I'm very impressed with what you have accomplished because we have pitched,
well, no, I have pitched projects to you, radio products.
I was like, hey, Terence could make this.
None of those things have come to light.
None of those things have been finished and you have your own product manufactured being
shipped, being used by people.
So congratulations.
Yeah, thank you.
I'm trying to at least.
Oh, it's very exciting.
I'm super excited by it.
And well done because you picked a very hard thing to make for your first product.
Yeah, yeah, I definitely wouldn't necessarily recommend people following my footsteps.
Um, specifically if they want, you know, if they want something easy to do, I guess you
could say.
But yeah, no, it's definitely been, it's definitely been an interesting process.
And I also, I think from a bit of a business standpoint as well, at least some of the way
that I'm trying to go about things is perhaps a little bit different than a lot of people
in this industry are kind of used to seeing stuff.
I feel like at least in the gun world, people are more used to seeing someone, you know,
they have a product idea.
They make a variety of prototypes.
They do a bunch of testing stuff and then over the process of, you know, a couple of
years and hundreds of revisions and stuff, right?
Okay, finally we have, you know, this one nylon product or plate carrier or bottle,
whatever, right?
And the approach, at least that I'm kind of trying to take or maybe balance a little
bit is, I don't know.
I guess you could say maybe a bit more of the Silicon Valley approach of rapid development,
rapid iteration, testing, you know, getting things out to people, getting feedback, then
moving.
And so it's definitely been interesting trying to, I guess you could say, combine, combine
those two aspects as well.
And you know, I, how, how people in this space will perceive, you know, maybe a business
that operates in a way that's not normal for this, this niche or this area of business.
I personally think that it will be very well received and particularly you're obviously
selecting a type of customer when you make something that is, you know, pretty advanced,
a dual channel, dual tuner, SDR.
You're aiming at a slightly different crowd than, you know, the NRA duck hunter folks.
So I think that a lot of us are ready for businesses that move a little faster, move
quickly and break things and have beta programs and stuff like that.
So I think, I think that it's very good.
That's actually been one of our observations in, in getting involved in the firearm industry
with T-Rex.
There are an awful lot of companies that do things the old way.
And the differences between guys who came into the firearm industry because they had
a passion for a particular project or a particular product or a particular market or a particular
problem that they wanted to solve, they run their companies very differently than people
who have been involved in the firearm industry for their whole lives or, or, you know, maybe,
they inherited a chunk of a family business or something like that.
And the firearm industry, in general, that, that first, that first group of people who
have entered the firearm industry because there's a particular niche they want to be in, often
they bring, you know, modern business books and modern business practices to the table.
And a lot of the folks in the older firearm industry, I think, have been a little bit stuck
in time in some ways and are doing things like, this makes me sound very, very young,
but like they do things the old fashioned way, like from the early 2000s.
It was ancient, ancient days when the internet was kind of a thing, but not really, you could
choose to use it or not and it didn't really have any business impact to the late 90s.
But part of that is, you know, maybe the kind of person who was involved in, you know, making
duck calls or whatever, but I think a lot of it is just that the internet has really
tried to leave the firearm industry behind.
They really have tried to, you know, not, not let certain companies advertise on Google
AdWords, not let certain companies be on PayPal or banned from PayPal.
So I think that there's an aspect there too that if you want to run a firearm company
and you want to do things on the internet and you want to do things quickly and rapidly
in the Silicon Valley way, you are taking on two challenges at once.
One is the business challenge and the other is trying to do stuff that way with platforms
and systems that are not going to onboard you as a valued customer right away.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's an interesting intersection, but it's one, and specifically I think from a big picture
perspective, you know, the thing that I am really trying to go for is, you know, like
individual and personal freedom on a fundamental level.
And specifically I think I've been trying to post a little bit more about this and share
some more of the ideas more on my personal page as well.
But one of the big driving factors I guess specifically nowadays is this idea that there's
a group of people kind of from the tech world, I guess you could say, that are really trying
to pursue personal and individual freedom and privacy and that kind of stuff.
And of course there is gun culture, the firearms industry, tactical industry, whatever you
want to call it.
And the people obviously within that industry that are, you know, don't just care about
guns as a hobby, but really do want to pursue individual freedom as well.
And I really think that the overlap there isn't just something that is, you know, like,
oh, hey, maybe these two things could work together.
I think in the long run, in the long, I guess, multifaceted battle for individual freedom,
it's really those two fields are really something that have to combine.
I feel like they're almost like two halves of a whole, you know, you need the decentralization
of infrastructure and digital stuff.
You know, since technology is basically invading our lives, we should at least be trying to
build technology and systems that preserve our privacy and preserve our freedom and stuff
like that.
And then on the other hand, we can have all those that we want, but if we aren't able
to preserve our physical freedoms, right, doesn't really do us any good.
It's kind of vice versa in that sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think those things do and should go hand in hand.
Like, there's probably some people who are trying to understand how you got into decentralized
radio communication as a result of getting involved in the firearm industry.
I think it makes perfect sense.
They are both tools that allow you to take on personal responsibility to protect yourself
in the physical world, but also to protect yourself, you know, with communication tools
as well.
And so this is, yeah, I think it makes perfect sense.
And I think more people are connecting these dots and realizing that we want to have really
good tools when it comes to firearms, we want to have really good defensive tools.
But there is a lot, there is a lot more to personal responsibility that we have as human
beings than just preservation of our own life.
There's tons of stuff that are our responsibility.
There's a lot of different tools that we want to have in our tool bag if we want to take
care of people in the long term and really fulfill those responsibilities well.
So here's a question for you.
Since you were involved in the software world and are more involved in the software world
than I am, I remember the early days of the internet when there was a pretty strong hacker
culture on the internet and everybody was, everybody was all about privacy and freedom
and information wanting to be free and all this kind of stuff.
And I was actually really discouraged with certain people in the early days of the pandemic,
people who used to be like radical, almost, you know, anarchist hacker dudes immediately
became authoritarians and people who had been arguing for a decentralized internet for
years and years and years now wanted contact tracing that was monitored by governments
and stuff like that.
And it was, I don't know, it was just a very interesting thing where I guess for some of
those guys it was a relatively predictable thing because they wanted to be anarchistic
socialists.
So that's already, you know, when the chips are down, you're going to pick either authoritarianism
or the opposite.
And so as soon as there was a pandemic, they jumped over to the one side.
But what have you observed?
You're a lot more heavily in that space at the moment than I am.
That definitely is an interesting phenomenon.
And honestly, I wouldn't necessarily have an answer.
I will say like, I definitely, even as far as being in the hacker space or the tech space,
I'm still very new to that.
You know, I was, well, I was barely around in the early 2000s.
I wasn't around in the 90s.
And even in the 2000s, I don't think I could have done too much.
But yeah, like looking back at that or even in the few years before the pandemic really
hit, I think actually the two years before then is the two years that I went to DEF CON,
which is the large information security and hacking conference happens every year in
Vegas.
And I believe it might have been either the next year or the year after that was when
you know, COVID hit, all this, all this stuff started happening.
And yeah, it was definitely something that I didn't expect.
Same, maybe, you know, maybe looking back retrospectively, it is something that I should
have expected.
But yeah, I don't know.
And I think that there's that also kind of, I guess you could say, narrows down the gap.
But like the, I guess you could say even the niche or maybe the sub community or even like
belief system within hacker culture, I guess you could say I'll put that in air quotes
of people who kind of believe in it, maybe just want to tinker with cool technology,
whatever, and people who really actually highly value that individual freedom and privacy
and all that kind of stuff in a much broader picture, right, both off and on the internet.
So yeah, I don't know.
It's an interesting phenomenon.
It's not something that I think at a surface level you'd think would happen.
But I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean, it's kind of, I mean, it's, it's not just limited to hackers.
Like in 2020 and 2021, there were all these punk bands, you know, who sing about being
anarchists and they were like, you can't come to our shows unless you wear a mask and show
us the government issued vaccination form.
Like, all right, I see what your punk you are.
That makes sense.
And I think that in the, in the hacker community, one of the things that is, you know, I'm speaking
about it very authoritatively to someone who is very much on the fringes.
I do, I do have very fond memories of terrible internet and dial up modems and, and BBS,
having to deal with BBSs and trying to find local numbers that I could call to get on
a BBS that had the files that I needed for certain stuff.
So I was somewhat involved early on.
And yeah, there's, there was a very, I would say you read things like the hacker manifesto
and various other things.
There was very much a desire to create a decentralized vibe and culture, but it was, it didn't have
strong roots didn't have strong roots in anything in particular.
And one of the things that I think was part of the issue, which comes back to firearm culture
really well, I think is a lot of folks really want freedom on the internet.
But there isn't a good definition of rights and there isn't a good definition of responsibilities.
It's just, you know, kind of just wanting stuff, you know, wanting more bandwidth and,
and calling that a right as opposed to actually being able to properly explain and defend it.
So, so as much as I love a lot of the folks in that community and I have fond memories
of the community, it was a very kind of superficial thing that was more reacting to stuff rather
than people wanting to write, you know, really solid explanations of, well, now we have
this totally globally collected, connected world and we can have decentralized communications
in the early days of the internet.
Stuff was really decentralized in a really fascinating way.
And rather than be really, I don't know, rather than be really deliberate and careful
about it, people, you know, really enjoyed it, saw the value and the coolness of it and
then migrated over to big centralized systems when they were more convenient pretty easily.
So I think that that is obviously an extremely human tendency just to be lazy and take the
convenient thing.
But now that we've seen some phases of decentralization and centralization and misuses of centralization
and authoritarianism throughout history having pretty negative consequences for people, I
think it is really cool that we can get firearm people who are really wanting to get down
to a solid definition of the rights of self-defense and what the responsibilities of those look
like and then start applying those to other rights and other responsibilities like free
speech and communication and privacy and so forth.
I really think this is a good place to revisit some of those things as we develop some of
these new technologies, but it has been really fun to watch some of the trends.
And man, it's interesting to think just how young the internet is.
I think it is just an unbelievably powerful world changing technology and yeah, it's actually
still new, still pretty new.
Yeah, and that's something that has, you know, I've been trying to think about a little bit
more recently is the actual effects of, you know, we'll call it the internet, but I think
maybe a better, more concrete way to define it is the ability for every human on the planet
to instantly be connected with every other human on the planet and not just be connected
to the people but be connected to their opinions, their problems, their solutions and also in
a way that is not as real as face-to-face communication and a lot of that stuff gets amplified either
for the, you know, for better or for worse, I guess you could say.
And so, you know, this, yeah, it's a question that I've been pondering like, I legitimately
don't think that we're truly going to realize the long-term effects that, you know, the
internet has had on humanity for, I don't know, at least several more years because obviously
we have people who are around that, you know, didn't have the internet growing up and now
have, you know, now have seen it basically come from nothing to infancy all the way to
what it is now.
And then we have, you know, kids who are 10, 12, you know, 15 years old today who have,
you know, they, like, they weren't even around during the early days and their only experience
of the internet is, you know, this, this, I don't know, whatever you want to call this,
the, well, I guess, yeah, the modern internet as we see it today and social media and all
that kind of stuff.
Yeah, it's a fascinating thing and I think that, well, one of the things that I've been
thinking about particularly recently, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine
who works in digital media, let's say, because it, he used to be involved in television,
but now there's just digital media, like whether you're, whether you're making stuff
that's going to go on a streaming service or a digital television broadcast or a website,
you know, all video, it's just digital media at this point.
But he's, he's about my age.
He grew up very much.
Like me, his dad had a video production company back when computers were very new.
So he got an earlier than usual start on computers and making things with computers.
And there's, there's a new generation of, of graphic artists who do not really understand
how computers work because they, they grew up with iPhones and several layers of abstraction
between the touchscreen and the computer.
So he thinks that actually puts them at a disadvantage.
They don't really know how their tools are working under the hood.
And that makes it harder for them to, I guess, think in a concrete way or think, think outside
of the box around problems.
If you grow up fighting with the limitations of your technology and installing new hard
drives and doing your own file management and, you know, peeking under the hood of the
operating system itself, I think that that builds shelves in your brain.
And he thinks this too.
So that when you're doing something really complicated, like developing a plugin for
After Effects or you're doing some complicated 3D rendering, he thinks that the guys that
dealt more closely with the bare metal of computers have a better, are in a better position,
are working from a better standpoint than folks that grew up with shiny touch screens
and a tech stack that is older than they are and just layers of abstraction, which is a
really interesting observation.
Yeah, and how those various layers of abstraction end up affecting not just the way that we
maybe necessarily interact with the technology, but also the way that we develop technology
in the future.
Because even from a development standpoint, I would say that once again, for better or
for worse, there's also a ton of layers of abstraction, even if we talk about really,
really recent stuff like artificial intelligence and being able to program with that.
Obviously, it's not going to make you a fantastic programmer, but that is just another, you could
maybe call it either a layer of abstraction or perhaps a tool, but something else there.
And that's honestly what I think that's one of the more alluring things about the hacker,
I guess you could say, side of things is like one, yes, you do actually have to deal with
a bunch of layers of abstraction because in reality, there's very few people who can
truly understand everything about everything in, let's say, a technical space, right?
There's definitely...
Especially after, yeah, so many years of crazy development.
There's a few of those and they're incredibly impressive and intelligent people.
But I think specifically with the hacker mindset, you're really trying to understand things
at a fundamental level or at the very least understand things enough to be able to break
them to get them to do what you want.
And that's, I think that mindset, right, if we want to call it the hacker mindset is
something that is incredibly important to just have in general.
And I think it applies to more than just technology.
Obviously, we think about it in technology more often than not.
But just the ability to look at something and be like, okay, in reality, what are my
constraints with this?
What really can I do?
If maybe if I look at this from a first principles perspective, maybe I can bend this, maybe
I can take this in some other direction and really try to have that, at least to some
level and other that fundamental understanding of how things work at a very low level.
Yeah.
And I think that this is actually a very important thing.
If we're going to talk about responsibilities, like if it is my responsibility to protect
my family, then I need to have a level of understanding of the tools that I would use
to do that that are pretty high level.
Like I am a terrible vehicle mechanic, but I need to be able to understand the basics
if I'm going to be responsible for my family to drive them around and know when it's safe
to be in the car and when it isn't and how to deal with this and how to deal with that.
And I think the same is true with firearms and I think the same is true with digital communication.
I am, to be quite honest, a little nervous about the future.
And I don't think in a paranoid way, but I am just, I am wanting to be able to control
the technology that my kids use in my house.
I want to just, I want to be able to understand it well enough that I can be confident that
I am doing my duty to protect them and give them the tools that they need to get ready
for the future, giving them the education that they need, but also protecting them.
And that requires that I kind of know what I'm doing a little bit.
You know, in the firearm industry, as people get more interested in night vision and in
radios, I feel a lot of responsibility.
You know, if I'm teaching people how to use something to understand it.
And I see a lot of folks in a lot of different industries being like, here's this thing,
we don't know how it works.
You push these buttons and you rely on the authorities if something goes wrong.
And that is just, that is just something that more and more people kind of get into that
sort of default mode, I think, where it's like, we don't really know what's going on,
but this is your lane and these are the people that you call when you have an emergency
and you don't really have, you're not expected to understand how any of this stuff works
because nothing is technically going to be your responsibility.
You will own nothing and you will be happy.
Yeah, interestingly enough, I was just talking to a friend of mine from Germany about the
great reset, this very evening.
And yeah, there's obviously we can talk about conspiracies and obviously it's not a conspiracy.
It's a very, very widely sold book.
But there isn't just a top down conspiracy to make people adopt easier, simpler, wimpier
tools and be reliant on other people.
Like it is laziness that is built into us.
It doesn't require a vast secret conspiracy.
If we don't work very hard to learn things and understand things and people give us an
alternative, we will, in our laziness, pick the alternative.
It requires effort to not do that.
And it requires understanding why there's benefits of putting the effort in.
Right.
Like I think that is basically the eternal struggle between convenience and maybe even
from a different aspect, you could look at convenient centralization authority, all the
stuff that maybe goes into there and the battle between that and then privacy and independence
and freedom.
And I was talking on the on the redacted podcast a little bit about this as well.
But I think that generally speaking, almost all of the time, the majority of people are
going to always choose convenience over, over freedom and privacy, let's say, until the price
of freedom and privacy for that convenience becomes too high to bear, you know, then things
like revolutions or whatever happen.
People like, oh, you know, maybe freedom and privacy is are important.
Maybe it is worth it to suffer a little bit and sacrifice a little bit for these things.
But inevitably at some at some point or another minus the, what I don't know, whatever percent
of the population might be 10%, 5%, 2% of the, let's just say, quote unquote true believers
in freedom and privacy, all that stuff.
Anyone else will go back to convenience.
And so I think it's a really interesting problem to solve in terms of like, even on
a very broad scale, like infrastructure and systems, because on one hand, you can, you
can obviously the easiest option is just to try to build something as convenient as possible.
And then just screw it, freedom and privacy don't matter.
You're just going to do the thing that either gets us the most amount of money now or is
the most convenient to users, let's say, right?
Then of course on the, on the other side of that, there is like, okay, let's build something
that is, that has freedom and privacy and security as the primary goal of the system,
right?
And we, you know, we are willing to sacrifice a small amount of convenience or maybe a
large amount of convenience for, for that freedom, privacy and security and stuff like
that.
And so the, I think a really good example of this and where these two things clash is,
I think, you know, maybe let's say a year and a half, two years ago, when we saw, I
guess you could say, maybe a little bit more of big tech, bearing down and censoring a
lot of stuff.
And we saw a couple of new quote unquote, let's say free speech platforms pop up, right?
And the thing that we saw happen is these platforms pop up, their main marketing thing
is, oh, we have the freedom of speech and, or maybe we have privacy or whatever.
Everyone floods there because people are like, oh, yeah, we're pissed off about big tech,
censoring, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
So they move over there and then they realize, oh, this is just worse Twitter and 80, 80%
of the people leave because the price is not worth it.
So then I think there's also a middle ground to that, which is, and, you know, perfect
example of that, I think is what Elon Musk has actually done with Twitter, right?
Instead of saying, oh, let's make a platform that's, you know, has freedom and privacy
and volatilize, like, no, let's just make a good platform that does its function as
a platform.
And we'll just include things that at least like in Twitter's case, preserve the users,
freedom of speech at a fundamental level.
Like, the freedom of speech isn't a, I mean, of course, there's a bit of marketing to that,
but it's, it's not our main marketing thing.
Our main marketing thing should be we have a good platform.
We have a good piece of infrastructure that works.
And ideally, if you want it to actually survive in the long run and not just, you know, be
around during the hard times where people are willing to sacrifice more, you should make,
you should, you need to make something that actually outperforms the existing option in
some way or another to where people are willing to choose it and still somehow include ways
to maintain individuals' freedom and privacy.
And that's, that is like the, the hard, you know, that's, that's the hardest option, of
course, and the hard question to solve.
But it's worth solving.
Yeah.
And it's, if we go back to those early internet pioneers who really love the idea of decentralized
communication, I can see things that they should have done differently.
Kind of like how it feels like the founders should have added a few more, no seriously.
This is what this actually means to the second of admin.
But yeah, it's, it's hard to foresee the future and the temptations that are going to come
along.
And as you're building social media platforms on top of old internet technology, and it's
like, oh, well, actually, you know, the people who built these, these various protocols,
we're not expecting every human being on the planet to have a device that's going to
connect to it all at once.
Oh, a really easy fix would be building centralized servers to help with some of the traffic.
And we'll just add more centralization, more control.
Downhill in there.
Like I can see the value in, you know, a non nefarious argument towards more centralization
because traffic control is a really good thing, even if you don't want to control ideas.
Yeah, even on that scale, it takes work to do the non convenient thing.
And it requires a very significant, you have to really want the thing that isn't convenient
to actually put in the work and the effort to build it.
And I do think that it is really nice that in 2020, I still can't remember the specifics.
I can't remember what we keep talking about 2020, but in 2020, we got to see some of
the downsides of a whole bunch of things.
We saw the downsides of certain platforms and certain assumptions.
We saw the true face of some different punk rock bands and others.
And I think that is helpful in reminding people of why the less convenient option is sometimes
good.
But I do think that we have to work on our pitch.
You know, I think that there's two sides to the pitch.
One side of the pitch is like, hey, that gilded cage looks amazing.
But being in there, if they close the door, is not so cool.
I think that that is an important thing to bring up to people.
But the other side of that is, hey, you got work to do outside of the gilded cage.
And it's worth doing.
So it's not just the negative aspects of the totalitarian hellscape that comes from total
control.
It is also the responsibilities that we have as well.
And I honestly think that people are pushing back against that a little bit as well.
We live in a time of almost unbelievable instant gratification.
No matter what it is that you want, you can have unlimited entertainment, food driven
straight to your door, pornography instead of relationships.
The opportunities to be incredibly lazy and build nothing and own nothing and be happy
seem infinite.
But happiness doesn't really come from all of that.
And I actually think that there is some pushback there.
There are people looking for something more.
And I really want to make sure that that is something that we talk about, that we don't
only talk about every time the governments have had total control, they always kill a
huge percentage of their own population.
Yes, that is true, is worth bringing up and reminding people of, but there's the other
side of that, which is we have responsibilities to build the other thing as well.
And there's tremendous fulfillment that comes from that because it's what we were made to
do.
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
And I think the perspective that I really try to have that I think, unfortunately, I'd
hate to say that maybe a lot of people specifically in this space maybe don't have is like just
the fact that there is hope for the future.
And even the ability or the desire to instill hope for the future, even just for the future
of your life and your children's life, let's say, like, hey, humanity is still going to
be around.
And there is an option that has a positive outcome if we build towards that and if we
work really hard, there is a chance that we can have this somewhat decent future.
And of course, hard times are going to come.
I think it's basically inevitable looking at human history in the next couple of years.
Yeah, there probably will be, I don't know, some sort of some sort of event that has some
sort of negative effect on some percentage of Earth's population, right?
But I think the mindset of like, okay, yes, you know, we should understand this.
We should be trying to prepare.
But at the same time, like you were saying, we should be building something.
First of all, obviously to be able to build something for after the bad times, if and let's
say when the bad times come, right?
But also perhaps building something that can make those bad times less bad.
Let's just, you know, put it simply like that.
So this is another story that will make me seem really old.
But I had a conversation with a guy named Bob Beamer, who was a super early internet guy,
who's the inventor of ASCII and he worked at IBM in the early days.
And one of the things that he was doing in 1999 with a bunch of the early internet and
computer guys was working really hard on the Y2K bug.
And he said something really interesting because now, of course, everyone looks back on the
Y2K bug is like, everyone was super worried about this thing and it didn't happen.
He was like, here's what we're doing.
I think I was talking to him in 1998 or 1999.
There are all these programmers that came out of retirement to try to fix the Y2K bug.
And he was like, here's a deal.
We work hard enough on this thing.
Everyone will laugh at us because nothing bad happened.
And he's like, that's the best outcome we have.
That's what we're really, really open for.
Yeah, man.
I really got it.
Yeah.
So he was like, well, you know, here's what happens.
It's kind of like when you prepare for war.
If you prepare for war quickly and effectively enough, sometimes it doesn't happen.
And then people are like, ah, it looks like we wasted all that money on those tanks because
the Russians turned around and went home anyway.
And I feel like this is going to be a really similar thing.
If people do the hard work to be responsible and to be dependable and not be dependent
on other people, well, there you go.
That was actually 90% of the work right there.
And so I'm extremely, extremely hopeful that if we take the less convenient option and
we take the actual constructive leaning into our responsibilities option, you know, not
only is that something we have to do if things get bad, but doing that before things get
bad is really, really good at a bunch of levels.
And we were called to do that anyway.
Other things are good or bad.
You still have responsibilities.
I think there's a really interesting kind of, you know, once again, going back to what is
what is the problem to solve, so to speak?
Because of course, I definitely think one of the one of the issues is, okay, how can
we get people who, you know, maybe actually care about this stuff or are getting into
a, let's just even say a mindset of self-reliance and freedom, we can just maybe call it that.
How can we get these people to either be willing to make some sacrifices for the sake of freedom
and also be can we build some systems for these people that maybe make the cost of those
sacrifices a little bit less, whether that be better software, better hardware or even
things like a better and stronger and more resilient community, right?
But I also think that the other issue to solve and of course, kind of the harder issue is
is it possible to make some sort of system, let's just say like a piece of infrastructure
that is good enough to where it can be accepted as the default by a majority, if not, let's
say all of society, while at the same time allowing people to make the choice of freedom,
right?
And I would say that that would, from like a freedom perspective, that would maybe be
the ultimate goal, right?
Kind of the hen that lays the golden egg because you can have something that is incredibly
widely adopted but also at a fundamental level, maybe not necessarily how do you say it?
Maybe not necessarily gives everyone that freedom, just like right off the bat, but
allows people to choose that if that is something that they want.
And I'd say kind of like the antithesis to this, I guess you could say, is we have, like
we were talking about a little bit earlier, the internet and the infrastructure of the
internet and how people didn't really care too much about, you know, maybe they cared
a little bit about decentralization and some of the stuff, but at the convenience of the
internet and the rapid growth, all of that kind of got put on the back burner.
We built out all the infrastructure and now once again, people are looking at, you know,
okay, here we have this large piece of infrastructure that spans all of humanity, but it doesn't
really preserve our privacy, how can we do that? And so we see, for instance, things
like web three, you know, whatever that kind of ethereal mess is, start to pop up and then
people want to build these applications that, you know, in all good faith and a very valiant
effort of preserving freedom, but they are building these things on top of a system that
inherently doesn't really support that to begin with, right? And I think that's primarily
one of the reasons why a lot of that stuff hasn't really taken off is because it's not
built on infrastructure that's conducive to that kind of mindset.
Mm hmm. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons I'm really excited that people are starting
to tinker with radio because up until now, radio has, you know, been a black box. It's
kind of been the backbone of the internet. Something you've always had to build on top
of the existing communication protocols and that lowest level of internet. And if we tinker
with, you know, radio communications that happen without an infrastructure, we can decide
what we actually wanted to look like. And ultimately, of course, you can't do everything
yourself and the more complicated and technologically advanced, we become the more the more of a
technology stack you're going to have to manage. So you're going to have to find people that
you trust to help you with stuff. You're going to have to find a smaller community that you
want to want to deal with. And I think that people are rapidly coming to that. Like, we
all distrust Zuckerberg. But, you know, the consequences of trusting him seem kind of
low. So we're all still on Facebook and Instagram. But I think that we all are interested in
dealer, smaller connections. Actually, I'll put a plug in for the the gray man network,
because I've actually really enjoyed hanging out with people on the gray man network specifically
because it is smaller, not just because it's, you know, a self hosted, encrypted server
that that preserves privacy, but just because it is a smaller group of people that I can
get to know, reminds me a little bit of the those BBS and early forums way back in the
day where you got to know everybody because there were only so many people in the IRC room
or wherever. And it was up to you to sort of cultivate those relationships and decide
whether this chat room or that chat room was a place that you wanted to be as opposed
to just being on the social media platform and letting the algorithm tell you who your
like minded folks are. The algorithm will cultivate your relationships for you. So I'm
really encouraged that that people who are who are interested in in, um, shouldering their
responsibilities are looking at new avenues to do that new areas of responsibility, new
things to, to take on even at the cost of convenience.
Yeah, I've, I've definitely enjoyed a lot of the conversations and I guess like you were
saying that the smaller, you know, I guess you could say like a more, more tightly knit
group of people on, on gray man network haven't, I definitely haven't been on there as much
recently as I would have liked to. Um, but yeah, it's, it's cool seeing those small little
things, you know, not just spring up, but the amount of people that end up going there
regularly and talking with people and having conversations and having discussions. And
I wonder if, you know, even as let's say, as the internet progresses in whatever way,
shape or form with humanity, of course, with the technology still being there to instantly
access everyone, if humans at some point will adapt and basically maybe revert back to,
I guess what you were talking about the, the way of just having my small tightly knit group
of people, right? Like the, like you were saying the internet is really new. So everyone
is, you know, kind of drunk with information and drunk with the ability to be able to instantly
access everyone and everything. But you know, maybe at some point, you know, the, the,
the hangover will hit humanity. And at, at some level, people will still be able to access
all of that, but things will kind of, I don't know, maybe revert back to a bit of a smaller
normalcy in, in some way or another. I don't know. What do you think about that? You think
we're able to adapt? I think, I think so. And I think that AI is actually going to play
a big part in this because I think that the, the botnets that we're taking over Twitter
are only the beginning as, as AI technology gets better, it's going to be so hard to even
know if the people that you're interacting with on the internet are human beings that
I think that getting back to actual human relationships is going to have some, some pretty
significant appeal to it. And I mean, I hope so. One of the things that was interesting,
going back to my childhood pre-internet, in our neighborhood, all of the kids, it was
a pretty small neighborhood. So we all had to be friends. We had no choice. We had to
be friends with each other. It didn't matter that we had different interests. It didn't
matter that we didn't like each other. It didn't matter that we had different personalities.
We had to be friends because we, it needed all, it took all of us to play a decent game
of basketball. It took all of us to play a decent game of pick up football. We had no
choice but to be friends, differences, notwithstanding. And then the internet came along and now
you can pick the exact flavor of fan group of specific season, of specific show of specific
remake that you want to be friends with. You can so curate your friend group to people
who are identical to you in the ways that you care about that it's really easy to lose
the skills to interact with people who you disagree with. And I think that that's not
only super negative, but it's also really not fun. And now imagine that you're in a
chat room of, I'm just going to pick on anime from it, anime appreciators who are 99% driven
by AI. You got to hang out with real people. And I think one of the major effects that
the internet has had and like you were saying, the ability to find the perfect niche of people.
Obviously there is a definite upside to that because without that ability, companies like
mine definitely wouldn't exist because the amount of people, I think at the moment the
business account has I think like around 30,000 followers. But right, finding with the internet
it's easy to find those 30,000 people that are across the planet. But if it was just locally
in this small, you know, I live in a small town of 20,000 people, I could maybe find two.
I could maybe find two, right? And so like you were saying the ability to curate your
group of friends and find people that exactly agree with you. But and not just that, but
also you have infinite options to choose from. So I have a friend who just recently got back
from a trip to Japan and he was telling me a little bit about that and kind of how, you
know, Japan is really this like tradition, very traditionalist society, right? And you
know, it's definitely lasted for as I guess as far as societies go for a for a fairly
long period of time. But I think, you know, what the the effect that something like the
internet has had on societies like that is really interesting because previously children
growing up in societies like that, all they would know is Japan and the culture of Japan.
And you know, maybe obviously with with any group of people, there are some hardships
and some difficulties, but basically it's like, Oh, this is this is my option. Maybe
I can do a couple of different things, but okay, cool. I'm just going to learn to live
with it, right? But now with the internet, you have not, you know, not just like full
grown adults that are capable of, huh, at least, you know, most of them hopefully are
capable of reasoning at some higher level, but you have children, you know, these young
children who don't really realize the consequences and the routes that different worldviews can
take grow up in a in a society and have instant access to all these other ideas. And now they
say like, Oh, well, why, why should I follow what my parents taught me? Like, look what,
you know, John Doe in America is doing it. Look what so and so in Russia is doing it.
Look what so and so in England is doing so to speak, right? And I think that has had
a fairly profound effect as well. It's where you have these really, you know, impressionable
young children now basically inundated with all of the opinions of humanity at the same
time with no filter and not really an ability or reasoning to filter the good and bad out.
But but with, you know, obviously with still enough intelligence to be able to process some
of that I saw, I saw really, I saw a really interesting post on a subreddit recently.
I think it was on like alpinism or maybe backcountry skiing that made me think about this in a way
I definitely hadn't before. And it was basically a picture that an adult had taken of their,
I don't remember the age of the child, maybe somewhere between seven to 10 years old and
going down like one of these big cool hours in the kind of channels in the backcountry
skiing down it. And one of the one of the comments to that post was basically the person
was saying like, you know, I would I would never take my child or like a child this young on
that because even though they might have the technical ability to be able to navigate this
stuff, they don't have the reasoning and comprehension to be able to fully understand the dangers
and the risks that they're taking. And I found that really, really interesting because like,
yeah, young children can definitely have right like the technical ability or the mental ability
to do things that they don't have enough experience to maybe truly understand in the full scope
that an adult can understand the potential consequences that these actions can have.
Yeah, yeah, that's it's interesting. I feel like there's a lot of there's a lot of really
rapid changes that we haven't fully comprehended yet. Much less the children that are growing
up completely. Excuse me, much less the children that are growing up just completely saturated
by this. As you were talking about Japan, I was thinking about a trip that I took to Egypt
right before the riots. And there was a stark generational difference there of older parents.
And they looked like, you know, eighth, ninth century dress and just really Egypt has not
changed a whole lot in certain ways and in certain places. So if you go out into the
country, man, it looks like it is from another time. And yet all of these people's kids were
in jeans and watching house on their phones. Because that was the show. That was the number
one show at the time. Every teenager in Cairo was watching house on their phones in the
buses sitting next to their parents who were wearing Delabayas from ancient times driving
by pyramids. It was surreal. And I was like, man, I'm glad I saw this moment in time because
Egypt is going to be so weird in another generation. So I'm given a fair amount of thought to
my own kids and just what I want to expose them to. But what I want to make sure that
they're really equipped for as well. What skills I really wanted to have. The roles and
responsibilities of a parent are, I guess, yeah, daunting to say the least but an interesting,
you know, challenge, I guess you could say one thing that I always think back to and this
interesting dilemma in the movie, in the movie, the Patriot when they're having the council
decide whether or not to go to war. Right? But right before he leaves, somebody asks,
you know, what about your principles in your sponsor? I'm a parent. I haven't got the luxury
of principles. And it's so interesting because on one hand, like you could be extremely
principled, you know, to maybe such an extent that you get thrown in jail or martyred or
something like that, right? That's definitely an extreme level. But you could be that principled
and basically where maybe the argument could be made that, okay, have you have you made
the sacrifice for nothing yet at the same time, if you're not principled at all, right?
And kind of in the movie, the reality that he saw was that, oh, okay, well, this does
end up coming to my front door. Right? And that's, I don't know, it's interesting.
Yeah. Yeah, that line. Yeah. Bugged me since the movie came out because it was, it is one
of those things where parents have this responsibility to provide and to protect. And there are
very significant risks associated with all of these choices. But at the same time, I do feel
like, no, no, parents have to be the guardians of principles. They really have to be the ones
that pass these on. Like you are a parent. Therefore, you have to have mastered principles
by this point. I had a similar argument with somebody at one point and they were like, yeah,
you know, I, I'm going to stay single so that I'm able to be a cultural warrior. I may actually
will take on these battles. And I was like, no, no, I think you're seeing that wrong. You have no
stake in the future whatsoever. A parent who's thinking about his children and his grandchildren,
that's the guy who's actually going to think this stuff through. That's the guy who's actually
going to lay his life down. You're just thinking about your own skin right now, man. You don't have
to think any further than the next 20 years. So I totally feel the responsibility to not rock the
boat too much because it'll make life difficult for my kids, but also wanting to, wanting to fight
every battle that I can so that they don't have to. Yeah, the line. I 100% get that line and 100%
disagree with it simultaneously. Yeah, but I think and with, you know, coming from the perspective
of a parent specifically, I think that's where it is, it is even more important to have, you know,
obviously not just a plan for the future, but to like have legitimate hope for the future and to,
you know, fundamentally believe that, hey, you know, I can have some impact on the world to where
the, well, one is, you know, one is having hope for the future. Like, yes, there is hope that my
children will live up, you know, will be able to grow up in a world that is at least relatively
peaceful or maybe slightly better. And then of course, the, the maybe the latter part of that is
if I work really hard, maybe I could make that world a slightly better place for them, right?
I think it's a very important responsibility going back to what we were talking about earlier,
like you, you don't just let people know the dangers of stupid decisions and building
terribly hostile systems. You also need to describe with them the importance of doing the
opposite of that, the importance of building something that is capable of continuing and
really benefiting people, even people in the future, like kids and grandkids.
Yeah. So, yeah. Well, I've really appreciated our conversation. I thought we were going to stay
in the technical weeds of demodulating various radio signals and synchronizing various software
defined radios, but I'm really glad that we deviated from that because this was, this was super fun.
And I'm guessing that you covered a lot of the same stuff when you were on the
redacted podcast earlier this week. Yeah, a little bit give or take. I think we got into
maybe a little bit more of the technical weeds as well. But yeah, it definitely was a decent amount
of similar stuff, I guess you could say. I should have checked before we started this conversation.
That way I could tell people, like, if you want to hear about this, choose a different podcast,
but I didn't have a chance to listen to it. The redacted culture cast, which my friend Forrest
puts on, dropped the episode earlier today, and I didn't get a chance to listen to it. But if you
would like to hear more of the technical stuff, you can head over there. And if you want to learn
more about the various projects, the terminal armament is working on that Vlad is doing and you
want to order an SDR STK. Oh, by the way, do you have any of those left to ship out or
to the other? Yeah, there's a few left to ship out the first batch because the first pre-order
had to be separated out into two batches to ship. The first batch is almost completely shipped,
should be all shipped by the end of the week. Second batch is due to start shipping and maybe
hopefully finish shipping out first, second week of May. Okay, excellent. So yeah, head over to
terminal armament to order one of those devices if you would like to take it with it. Although,
I will say you can learn so much just from a single SDR. So do you have any of those in stock right
now? Okay, so grab a single one if you're new, tinker, experiment, learn. Yeah.
Want to get them in stock more, but yeah, absolutely. Like get one, you know, don't, if you really
want one, yeah, don't wait for us to have one in stock by it from, you can get it on the RTL-SDR
blog like on their website, they have an Amazon store. You can find one from a guy behind Walmart
or I don't know, just get one, put it in your kit, learn how to use it. It's important. They're
cool tech, it's cool technology. Yeah. Yeah, what's the world coming to you? You got to buy radio
receivers. Cheesy guy behind a Walmart. Yeah. I was just talking earlier, I have a Flipper Zero,
which is one of the most innocuous little electronic multi-tools and it's already banned from Amazon.
It's already banned from eBay. People are talking about trying to keep them out of the country
because they're so dangerous and it's just the greatest little educational tool. But it might be
misused. So it has to be denied us. And then yes, sounds a lot like gun control. Guns can be
misused. That's why you can't have them. So I recommend that people look more into radios
because it is a really important way to communicate and allows for decentralized communication and
the digital stuff that I believe is coming down the pike for individuals is going to be really
helpful. I do think that we will have more and more people like you, Vlad, who are interested in
this stuff and have principles, even though they're parents, they'll have principles that
really drive them to do the hard and inconvenient work of their own implementations
of encryption, their own ways of doing things that can be understood and can be controlled and
can be made more safe. So I'm really encouraged by that. I'm really encouraged that people are
picking up more of these responsibilities. So that makes me really helpful for the future. And
it will certainly make things more exciting. Absolutely. So thank you so much for listening
to the podcast, everybody. And thank you very much, Vlad, for coming on and being part of this
conversation and agreeing to do it publicly. But we will have some more offline conversations
on some of the projects coming up. So that'll be good.