BONUS: BCP LIVE with Winn Schwartau

This episode has been automatically transcribed by AI, please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.

Chris: Welcome, everyone to BarCode LIVE from Sin City, where tonight I’m joined by a security legend. Having been in the industry since 83, he’s evolved into one of the world’s top experts on security, privacy, infowar, cyber, terrorism, and related topics. Ladies and gentlemen, writer, lecturer, teacher, and just a straight up badass dude, Winn Schwartau.

Winn: Thank you. Whoa. Thank you. Thank you. That was overly kind. Most of it was bullshit.

Chris: That was Chat GPT, buddy. Well, thanks for joining me, man. Did you recognize that sound clip? Could you hear it?

Winn: No, I couldn’t hear. I mean, I don’t have my hearing AIDS in and Barry wasn’t helping.

Chris: Gotcha. That was war games.

Winn: Oh, was it? Which part was that? I didn’t hear what words were being used.

Chris: Is this a game or is this real, what’s the difference?

Winn: When Matthew Broderick is sitting down, shall we play a game? That’s it.

Chris: And I thought that was very relevant.

Winn: We are going to end up there, I think, if we get this discussion going.

Chris: All right, let’s get it going.

Winn: Because speakers are playing a game, maybe. Right?

Chris: Mike, what’s your favorite hacker movie?

Winn: I really do like War Games, but I also remember back in 95, I went with my wife to see Hackers, and I walked out halfway through it. And now it’s one of my favorites because back in 95, we were taking shit so seriously about what the perception of the hacking community was.

Chris: Yes.

Winn: And so much of that was so distorted. But in retrospect, it’s a lot of fun and I enjoy it. And there’s a few people in there, I think many of us actually know who they are supposed to be representing.

Chris: That’s right. So, yeah, the reason I played that clip because I think it’s very relevant to what we’re going to talk about today and just defining the meaning of reality.

Winn: Oh, my God.

Chris: All right, so it’s an area that you’ve been focused on recently and called the METAWAR Project, and it’s a story and challenge of reality distortion.

Winn: Yes.

Chris: So, yeah, tell us more about this. I need to hear this.

Winn: Well, it didn’t begin that way when I started playing with the METAWAR thesis roughly two years ago, was it, Mark? I don’t know. When we started kind of bullshitting in London about it, and I thought that I was going to be looking at the metaverse and doing the technology and the security and the privacy and the bolts and the nuts and all the stuff that we’re all very used to doing. Several months into the project, I had the first spin of everybody know the word metanoia?

Winn: Metanoia. Not paranoia. Metanoia. I started having this catharsis realizing the metaverse and what I was working on wasn’t so much about technology and my worldview shifted that as we’re doing immersive technology and reality distortion, what we’re really talking about is what it means to be a human being. How do we put together these silicon systems with our carbon systems? And I tend to look at the universes through a time lens and some of the answers started coming out. And many of them are very disturbing.

Winn: Some of them are exceedingly enlightening. And for those of you familiar with the work of philosopher David Chalmers, he coined the term the hard problem. What is consciousness? And as I started playing more and more with the METAWAR thesis, it became very clear that we are right now on the edge of technology and human interaction, where we are going to be no longer able to really make a distinction between objective and subjective reality.

Winn: And that’s the path that it’s taken me for the last two years.

Chris: You have this theory broken down into six sections, is that correct?

Winn: Again, it didn’t begin that way.

Chris: Right? That’s how it evolved.

Winn: It evolved into I was very interested in the concept of Vrxr and we had done some gaming work and some stuff over the years, kind of playing around with it. And so as the METAWAR thesis came about, it did end up in six steps. The first step is immersive experience. The second step is reality distortion. Third step is disinformation, which turns into manipulation. And when then you add reward, you get addiction and compliance.

Winn: This is what we are building right now. This is what Google is building. What Metaplatforms inc is building. What they all think is going to be so cool is going to end up being the most powerful reality distortion, addictive technology ever invented by man. And we seem to be okay with that.

Chris: All right, so let’s walk through the six. So the first one you mentioned was immersive experience.

Winn: Immersive experiences. A lot of people talk about the metaverse as though it’s going to be one of the visionary concepts that came out of what Snow Crash, I believe it was. And it’s about an all inclusive, all immersive, for lack of any of the word, a holodeck, where the ability to distinguish between objective reality and subjective reality completely disappears. And so it began there, but that’s not a reality in today’s technology.

Winn: So when I really started looking at reality distortion, if we think back 14,000 years, I kind of used that as the first date for the metaverse, because that is when, after the dryest event and the end of the Ice Age, people started getting back together and talking. Okay, so if you have Homer sitting around a campfire in Greece and he says, everybody close your eyes, I’m going to tell you the story of Odysseus.

Winn: The object is to alter your reality in a good way, storytelling. And that is one degree of immersiveness. Immersiveness has evolved in sophistication misinformation. Disinformation has been part of it for thousands of years. But then technology started getting in the middle of it. And then it evolved really, really quickly in the last 120 years to the point that where we are today. Fake news and text.

Winn: You’ve got Photoshop stuff. Is it real? Is it not real? And then deep fake. So the degree of immersion is the only thing that has changed with the technology. But fundamentally, how many politicians do we hear that 42% of America says, yeah, that’s absolutely right, no facts, no nothing. And that is an immersional technology that has gone through all of these steps and resulted in cultural compliance.

Chris: Then this is immersion that you’re talking outside of the form factors that we know today. Correct.

Winn: Is it going to be more immersive inside of a helmet? For me? No, because the latency issues make me sick. For a lot of people, it’s absolutely fine. Is the 70 deg IMAX? Is that more immersive than a big flat screen? That’s all about perception, human perception, and how we take in information in our senses. So it’s not a one size for all type of experience.

Chris: Do you feel like there is enough study in this that we can understand what the true effects are of being immersed?

Winn: No. Neuroscience is really a very comparatively new field. Arguably 20 years. Greg close enough. And when you start looking at the issues of information disinformation, reality distortion, I can find nothing super relevant much before 2019. So a huge amount of the work that I’ve been doing has been talking to people and reading and studying on exceedingly recent work. And the amazing thing is how much of the neuroscience work is actually proving and validating many of the theories that the metaverse thesis puts forth.

Chris: Interesting. All right, let’s move to the second step, which is reality distortion.

Winn: Reality distortion. What is real? What do you believe? Are you a believer now? Do you have belief in absolute, total belief? Or you kind of sort of believe something and think it’s sort of true? Reality distortion wants to mess with your perceptions and what you believe. So if you end up in a VR environment or an interactive online environment are you talking to that? How many people have fucked with chat GPT engines? Just do it? Of course we have, because we’re all trying to learn.

Winn: Sometimes they’re very convincing. Sometimes once we learn how to pollute them a little bit, they become less convincing and a lot more. That’s a cool toy. So reality distortion isn’t only about the technology itself. Again, it’s back to the individual human. How does that individual human respond to those sensory inputs and what conclusions do they reach as a result? And that’s then you lead into the third of disinformation, because I mentioned entertainment. When you go to the movies, you want to be entertained and kind of, okay, I’m going to believe Mary Poppins for the next 2 hours. Cool.

Winn: But then you go watch Oliver Stone’s JFK and 60, what is it, 68% of americans think that is factual history. That is reality distortion through disinformation. Except in that case, it was misinformation because it wasn’t not intentional to be evil. It has ended up, as we’ve learned more from neuroscience, maybe he should have skewed the movie a little bit differently. And being able to discriminate between misinformation and disinformation is very important, even though the end results may be the same.

Chris: Okay, so can you explain the difference between disinformation and misinformation, just so we level set here?

Winn: All right. Misinformation is I tell you, the 1922 Yankees hit 412 home runs that year. There’s a piece of data is that piece of data meant to mess with you, or is it meant that I just was spouting some bullshit? Yeah, and so misinformation is more about spouting bullshit and not knowing your facts, not knowing what the hell you’re talking about. Disinformation has intention behind it. Yeah.

Chris: Okay, so how does disinformation, misinformation or manipulation in the metaverse differ from reality now as we know it?

Winn: Well, we are in the we are in the metaverse. These guys are in our metaverse right now. There are a certain number of them out here who at one point in the last ten or 15 minutes absolutely had 100% focus on our words and visual. And for those moments, you are totally embedded in your own personal metaverse with just audio and sight. Those are the only two senses. And then you go back and talk to Barry, unfortunately, or somebody else, and you’re shifting your sense of reality between our existence and your perception and then whoever you’re sitting and talking with.

Winn: So it’s all different connotations of the metaverse, because it’s all about storytelling. Technology is incidental.

Chris: Yeah. I want to get back to what I mentioned earlier about the form factor, like what we think of now as the metaverse. There is a form factor involved. There is equipment involved. Do you believe in the near future or the long term future that it’s going to become more of a natural feeling, a natural form factor for people to use?

Winn: Absolutely. How many of you have read the recent July 25 Apple patents on reality distortion? That’s only because I sent it to you. Still counts. If you look at the April sorry, the July 25 Apple patent. It is not specifically on was it the vision pro, I think is what they called it? It’s how Apple is patenting the ability to pick up through the ears all of your biological signals, to be able to use them in a feedback loop to generate a more distinct reality based upon your actions and your unconscious reactions to whatever stimulus you’re being given.

Winn: It was just patented less than a month ago. That is a mechanism for reality distortion, because as soon as you introduce a feedback loop of any sort, the human element, the human person involved, the carbon existence, starts to lose some level of autonomy. And again, are we okay with this? Are we all right with it? Do you want to give away who you are? Do you want to give away your essence? And right now, it’s legal.

Winn: And I’ll reference you the patent on how it’s done.

Chris: I’m just so glad you didn’t say Google Glasses is coming back.

Winn: Google the research that’s coming out of Google, compared to the work that I have had the opportunity to see coming out of Apple, google is a decade behind. Apple understands, through an awful lot of effort and several billion dollars of research what the loop, the sensory loop systems of the human being talking to the silicon systems and what is needed to completely fool the human existence?

Chris: Okay, let’s take it to the next step. Reward.

Winn: All right. Reward.

Chris: Sounds positive.

Winn: It sucks. No. How many kids, you know, whatever age or adults that have no life are playing endless games. The average gaming time is 2 hours and 38 minutes per day per human, 12 billion hour a day of gaming for rewards. Now, those rewards are typically pretty useless. You can’t buy me a beer with them. They’re effectively NFTs or bragging rights or some such intangible that has a meme level, a mental level of value that does not translate into our world.

Winn: But that reward system exists. The second reward system is our internal feel goods. Every time Barry posts something, and I go like, he gets this whole dose of feel good chemical in him, it’s a little bit, just a little bit. But that little bit becomes more and more and more required. And what happens is his mental immune system starts to need it. Starts to need it. And this is the addiction through reward that we’re allowing hundreds of millions of kids to do right now.

Winn: How many of you allow your kids to get addicted to tech? How many of you are going to admit it in public? I got cameras, all right? We’re on Chatham House rules. Here the addictive level. How many of you have and I mean this seriously, how many of you have actually tried to pull them off success level? On a scale of one to five? Thumbs down. Thumbs down. I got two. Threes. They’re lying. All right?

Winn: Two. So we have again, I’m not making any of this shit up. We already have digital opioid addiction. We already have it. Now we’re going to take feedback based biosensors and create content based upon what I like, what my body automatically unconsciously reacts to. Do we want that? That’s what we’re building?

Chris: I’m going to throw you an unexpected question.

Winn: An unexpected I don’t know the answer.

Chris: Then, in terms of rewards, since we’re on the topic of reward, what are the benefits that the Metaverse can provide?

Winn: Oh, the metaverse. There’s some really cool shit. If you want to build a factory, go build a digital twin version ahead of time. Save a boatload of money. Really pre engineer the damn thing out and stress the fuck out of it before you build can. That’s one of the great things I had this argument in Holland was going through, and the argument was, Barry, you need a heart operation really bad. So you have a choice.

Winn: You can have a doctor 48 years old and he’s operated on 298 people and only three have died. Or you get a heart doctor who’s 28 years old who has never operated on a live human being. But in an immersive experience with Tactile response, he has saved 4000 digital lives by learning how to do it. Who do you want operating on you, Barry? You want the old guy who kills people? Fair enough. That’s your choice.

Winn: These are some of the things that are going to come out of the metaverse that are going to be great to be able to do training and experientials, especially when you have virtual Tactility emerging and coming about. There’s going to be some amazing things that can be done. I mean, I’d really rather have cops that are a lot more practiced at doing stuff in the metaverse in some form of the metaverse before putting their knee on somebody’s neck for eleven minutes. There’s an alternative and we have the opportunity with some of this technology to actually be able to do some serious, serious good.

Chris: Yeah. And your third option would be a robotic surgeon.

Winn: The DA Vinci is still pushed by a surgeon’s hands. DA Vinci is still there. Is that man machine interface, whatever the combination is, we’re going to have the abilities to do better training in so many areas.

Chris: Are there any use cases that we haven’t explored yet that’s going to aid society?

Winn: If you’re in Florida, fuck no. I think Florida is giving us an example of exactly what not to do. I’m not going to be able to go down that road.

Chris: Okay, all right.

Winn: But it ends up back to the concept of what is freedom and freedom of First Amendment speech. First Amendment. Read. Oh, shit. You mentioned Shakespeare. We got to ban those damn books now. And between Florida and Texas, I mean, can’t we just get rid of them?

Chris: Oh, okay.

Winn: Addiction, addiction.

Chris: Let’s talk about addiction.

Winn: All right. You get those NFTs. You’re addicted to NFTs because there’s no real monetary value, but your brain learns of value, comparative value. I have more NFTs than kaylee. I must be a better oh no, you’re really a gamer. So I picked the wrong person there.

Chris: So hold on.

Winn: NFTs non fungible tokens.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I haven’t heard of NFTs in a while. It seems know.

Winn: But that’s what a badge of honor is on any game.

Chris: Yes. So my question to you is are NFTs beyond what we know as NFTs? Can NFTs be any concept and idea?

Winn: It is that’s all. NFTs are jack Torsey’s first tweet what it sell for? $2 million. And they can’t give it away for $7 now on Ebay NFTs. When you don’t have a tangible value or an economic system that has a conversion fiat to existing economic systems, there’s some problems, but kids don’t know. Bragging rights is so important to the mental stability of kids and to many, many adults, especially in this community, that there’s a whole spectrum of people on various we’re all nuts in some ways, and this is our home to be able to do this.

Winn: And so we’re all going to have slightly different ideas of what actually has value. When we give away a badge for Hacker Jeopardy. Is there real value in that? Nah, it’s fucking bragging rights. But they’re cool bragging rights. And at least here is a thing. Symbol here is a little thing. But when you’re dealing with mental constructs, this is a whole new game that we don’t fully understand.

Chris: Yeah. What does the metaverse mean for mental health?

Winn: For the good mental health or bad mental health? There are certainly some great applications. I don’t think they’re ready for primetime yet for in psychology and mental health. We’re inching towards it. We’re seeing a lot of the mental health professionals and the psychological folks talking to each other about how can I create an environment, can I create a safe space? Go back to the 70s with immersion tanks and you’re in the salt water of the perfect temperature, just like the Dead Sea over in Israel.

Winn: And then peace and love. And there has been good reports. And then there was that movie when the guy turned into a she wolf or something. It was called Altered States, if anybody remembers that movie from a 1981 shitty movie. Mental health, yes, absolutely can be done. How to do it? Is there a defined way of a prescription that’ll get you from A to Z? No. Some of the very recent in the last 18 months immersion systems are now fully ambisonic tactile and they offer visual components.

Winn: Is it the perfect answer? No. Is it 100% immersive holodeck? Depends upon how much you’re going to allow yourself to be fooled, which is an acceptable answer. So, yes, there are some great positives there, especially for PTSD and what have you, to be able to put people in environments that will recondition and decondition what they have been through. Because you got to keep in mind one most important thing that essentially who we are is a result of emotional things that have occurred to us throughout our lives that have struck an unconscious memory system in the deep seated parts of our brain around the amygdala over which we have how much control. And we don’t know the answers to all of that yet.

Chris: Okay, so what does the metaverse mean for physical health?

Winn: I have never thought of that. But the media thing I would think of is somehow you’re going to have exoskeletons the robotics people are talking about the digital somalkri and the synthetic humans. These are going to be different technologies that are coming together. I have not looked at exoskeleton and the physical aspects of it at all. I have been looking and been sucked down to looking at the brain function.

Chris: Yeah.

Winn: But I have no doubt there will be some great opportunities there because a certain amount of those functions, if you look at deep brain stimulation deep brain stimulation is giving people mental control over physical objects. Is that the metaverse for them? That may be their metaverse, because now, for the first time in 20 years, they’ve got freedom to interact with the physical universe. That’s an entirely new reality for them.

Winn: So again, there is no hard definition. We’re all going to have to really start coming to terms that this is a completely stochastic probabilistic. There are no hard answers. There’s no on off binary condition here.

Chris: In terms of addiction, do you think people in the future will encounter an involuntary addiction, meaning that addiction is involuntary? I mean, incorporating or not incorporating a metaverse?

Winn: The metaverse again, the metaverse is a fluid dynamic. The metaverse is today. It could have been yesterday. It could be listening to the pictures. You’ve seen the pictures of 1930s families during the Depression. They all get together and they watch the speaker on the big box listening to the radio plays. They are immersed into that. That is as much the metaverse as getting into a helmet with Ambisonics today.

Winn: It’s just different tech, because if you go back and I forget the year benny Goodman and Edison both did experiments in New York, trying to tell the difference between to a lay audience, the difference between the sound on a 78 Rpm crappy record and a live orchestra. And unless you’re tuned and learn through experience, the difference, sure, they sound the same. So it’s completely fluid. There are no hard answers.

Winn: But it’s going to get more addictive. And it’s going to get more addictive. Have any of you read any of the addiction notes published by Google and or Metaplatforms Inc. Where they openly admit that what they’re doing is for addictive purposes? Read my book. It’s coming out soon.

Chris: I know I had to get the book in there. Come on my list.

Winn: Work with me there.

Chris: And the name of the book is.

Winn: The name of the book? Shit, no. It’s the art and science of METAWAR. And then there’s a subtitle that we’ve been massaging, and I don’t remember it. Okay, all right. But it does tie in AI manipulation. It ties all of the future tech together in this analysis of what has been going on and what is going to be happening.

Chris: Okay, we’re on the last step. Compliance.

Winn: By the time I have you under my reward system and you’re addicted. You’re wearing a red hat, aren’t you? That’s it. I mean, it’s that simple. We’re seeing this happen. We’ve seen it happen for the last eight years. Of what happens with addiction and compliance and it’s all a mental construct.

Chris: Is there any governance in this space now?

Winn: No very is. I spent a fair amount of time in Europe discussing these ideas because Europe is a lot more open to these kinds of things. And I learned a great deal. Met with a number of neuroscientists over there and the reaction that I got oh, I did one for the Canadian government too. And the European folks that I met with out of the European Commission they want in the Canadian Department of Privacy and something they want in.

Winn: I think that when this project comes out and you see there’s a film crew here because they’re working on a documentary about this, I think the biggest initial resonance will probably be in Canada and EU, maybe the UK, I don’t know. But definitely the EU Commission has addressed this. They’ve already addressed the issues of AI explainable technology, and they’ve already lambasted meta platform zinc with a lot of fines.

Winn: So I think we’re going to see more potential action over there, especially when it comes to addiction and compliance.

Chris: Does that matter? Is that important?

Winn: If I don’t do anything, I have chosen to fail.

Chris: That’S last call here at Virgil’s. So I have one more. You got time for one more?

Winn: Where am I going?

Chris: Okay, if you opened a Cybersecurity or Metaverse themed bar, what would the name be and what would your signature drink be called?

Winn: Oh, fuck, I didn’t tell you this one was no, open up. I mean, I know what my son’s bar is supposed to be called. Well, is there a dot meta? Is there a TLD with anybody? I don’t know. I think that’s going to be Mike. We need to do a contest on that. Win is going to open a Metabar. We have to work on that. Over drinks tonight, folks. Not meta yet. There you go. Otherwise, metaplatforms inc. You notice I’m being exceedingly careful about talking about Metaplatforms, inc because they are using the word meta.

Winn: And with Meta war and everything I’m working on, I actually had to call my lawyers and I go, what the fuck? How fast am I going to get in trouble with this? My own take was it’s a Greek prefix and some naming fool down there said, oh, this is a good name to allow everybody to troll us with. Yeah, I’m going to stick with that. So stick this Meta where the sun don’t shine.

Chris: All right, so what are you serving there? Is it going to be a virtual drink? Are you serving reality drinks? What are you serving there? What’s your signature drink there?

Winn: How intoxicated are you when you’re coming in?

Chris: Okay, so do you have to get a breathalyzer on your way in?

Winn: Well, it has to be on a spectrum, of course. There’s no single answer.

Chris: Okay. Because I think if you’re at a certain level, your already reality is distorted.

Winn: Don’T they in the hotels out here have the virtual bars? The air bars where you put on the mask?

Chris: Yes, they do.

Winn: And so, if you take one of those and then you add the kissing element to the helmets now, okay. You could actually have an awful lot of fun. You could make everybody do Darth Vader virtual drinks. I don’t know. I have not thought about opening a bar in many years. I love it. But thank you for that.

Chris: Yes, let’s get on. Let’s get on it.

Winn: Can I find my way back to my hotel room when I think I is that a real question?

Chris: Barry wait, you could be in your hotel room the entire time at the Metabar. That’s how you get there. Wyn thank you so much, my friend.

Winn: Thank you.

Chris: Take care and appreciate all the knowledge. Man thank you. Wyn schwartel.com, check it out. Do you have links for the book.

Winn: On your site to the project we’re working?

Chris: Come see win.

Winn: He’ll direct you. Thank you.

Chris: Thank you, guys.