If you want to, we can do what we did yesterday and since we're in Wolf Hall, let out a wolf howl to wake up the people downstairs. In case there's anybody still sleeping in the building, we'll have to make that a tradition, Wolf Hall. My topic for this lecture is the Curse of Economic Nationalism. And I've written three or four books about this. Doesn't necessarily mean I'm a big expert on it, but it's one of my interests. And my book, Hamilton's Curse, the reason I chose that title is that, this one here, I might as well put it up there. No, that's not good. The reason I chose that title is there's a book by a business historian, John Steele Gordon, called Hamilton's Blessing. And Alexander Hamilton once said that a large public debt would be a public blessing. And so that's why I chose one. No, I said, no, it's a curse, not a blessing. But Hamilton's, the reason he said that is to give you a little background on what economic nationalism is. And Hamilton is the godfather of so-called economic nationalism in America. And many other countries have copied what he stood for, the ideas, the policies, and so forth. So this is not just an American history thing. But so he's the godfather of the economic nationalism. And so anyway, what I'm going to start with is President Trump, one of the first speeches he made about economics, he chose to go to Louisville, Kentucky to give his big speech on economics. And so his big speech. And what's the speech about? Well, here's one of the things he said in this speech. This was on March 20th, 2017 in Louisville, Kentucky. Henry Clay believed in what he called the American system and proposed tariffs to protect American industry and finance American infrastructure. And so he was there in Louisville because Henry Clay was from Kentucky. Henry Clay was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, a member of Congress, Secretary of War, and he was a well-known politician in the early 19th century. He basically was in politics from, I think, 1911 until he died in 1852. And so Trump, at least one of his speech makers or his economic advisors, apparently convinced him that his economic agenda should be economic nationalism in the spirit of Henry Clay. And I doubt that Trump himself knew anything at all about Henry Clay before that, before somebody told him, hey, let's do this. Let's do this. And so anyway, I want to give you some background. Henry Clay, he's not the father of economic nationalism. It was Hamilton. But after Hamilton died, Henry Clay picked up the mantle. Hamilton died in 1804 in a duel with Aaron Burr. And our friend Gary North once said that he started an Aaron Burr society once and had ball caps. And on the back of the ball cap it said, not soon enough. And Aaron Burr shot Hamilton dead in the duel. So he wasn't a fan of Hamilton. And neither was Murray Rothbard as far as that goes. So what was this economic nationalism? The word itself is deceiving because it implies that if it's nationalism, that everyone in the nation would benefit from this. But actually it's exactly the opposite. It was always a collection of policies that would benefit a very narrow group of special interests at the expense of everybody else. Economic nationalism. And the group of interests, it was really another word for mercantilism. And Murray Rothbard, one of his simple definitions of mercantilism, was a collection of policies that benefits producers at the expense of consumers. That's basically what it was. It was in the 17th, 18th, 19th century in Europe and in parts in the United States eventually. That was mercantilism. And mercantilism is the system that Adam Smith sought to debunk in his famous book, The Wealth of Nations. And the book is a critique of mercantilism which was the prevailing interventionist, corrupt interventionist system of England at the time. And that's why he wrote the book. And here's what Murray Rothbard said about the gang in America, the Hamilton gang. Patrick Newman yesterday mentioned a man named Robert Morris. Robert Morris was the first Treasury Secretary even before they called the job Treasury Secretary. I think they called it superintendent of finance during the American Revolution. And he was one of the wealthiest men in America. He was well connected with the whole the New York, Boston, Philadelphia business class of wealthy people. And he picked Alexander Hamilton as his front man in politics. And here's what Rothbard said was their objective, the objective of the nationalists who were their political party was the Federalist Party. So what they wanted was, and Rothbard says this in his book, The Mystery of Banking, he wanted, quote, to reimpose in the new United States a system of mercantilism and big government similar to that in Great Britain against which the colonists had rebelled. The object was to have a strong central government, particularly a strong president or king as chief executive built up by high taxes and heavy public debt. The strong government was to impose high tariffs to subsidize domestic manufacturers, develop a big Navy to open up and subsidize foreign markets for American exports and launch a massive system of internal public works. In short, the United States was to have a British system without Great Britain. And then in the next part, Rothbard says an important part of what he called the Morris scheme, as Rothbard called it, was to organize and head a central bank to provide cheap credit and expanded money for himself and his allies. The Bank of North America, which was the first government national bank in the U.S., was deliberately modeled after the Bank of England. And so that was the agenda. It was always the agenda. That was the economic nationalist agenda, protectionism, what we today call corporate welfare, supposedly for road and canal building and then later railroad building when railroads came along, a large public debt and a bank run by politicians to provide cheap credit to politically connected businesses. Not to provide cheap credit to everybody, only your political supporters. You don't want to provide cheap credit to businesses who are going to vote against the opposing party. You're going to provide cheap credit to the businesses that support your party. And that's what it was for. And as far as Hamilton's public blessing, he was very Machiavellian about that. And the reason he gave for this, of a big public debt, was not that we needed to borrow a lot of money to build roads or infrastructure or anything like that. But a public debt for the sake of having a big public debt is what he wanted because he said that the affluent and the wealthy people of the country would own most of the bonds, the government bonds, and therefore they would form a potent lobbying force for bigger government and higher taxes to make sure that there would always be enough money in the Treasury to pay off the principal and interest on their bonds because Hamilton had condemned the U.S. Constitution. He called it a frail and worthless fabric after it was ratified because it didn't make government big enough. It made it bigger and more powerful than the Articles of Confederation, but he wanted it much bigger, much bigger. And so his scheme to make it much bigger outside of the Constitution was public debt, the connection with public debt. And he would spend the rest of his life after the Constitution was ratified thinking of ways to undermine the U.S. Constitution. He's the one who invented the idea of implied powers of the Constitution as opposed to the delegated powers that are actually in the Constitution. It was Hamilton in his debate over the bank with Jefferson who invented that. So that's the genesis of what's known as economic nationalism, where it comes from. And so let me look at some of the elements.  Let's take a look at the bank. The first bank, government-run bank, was called the Bank of North America. It only lasted about a year or so because it inflated its currency so much and had so little gold reserves behind it that no one trusted the currency. And it just became defunct, it had to be privatized after about a year. And that was Robert Morris, that was his idea, Robert Morris. And Murray Rothbard called Hamilton Morris his young disciple. Well, he's a young disciple. And so Morris failed there and then they turned right around and started lobbying for the same thing basically, but with a different name, the Bank of the United States. And so they succeeded in getting the Bank of the United States. George Washington invited Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson to both give him their opinions on the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States. Jefferson said it's unconstitutional because it's not in the delegated powers. Hamilton said, if you read between the lines of the Constitution, it is constitutional because there are implied powers. And Jefferson came back and said, I've read between the lines and it's all blank space. He didn't say that exactly, those are my words, but that's pretty much the gist of his argument. But Hamilton relied on the necessary and proper clause of the United States Constitution that says the delegated powers are all listed there. And then it says the government has the power to do what's necessary and proper to execute all these delegated powers. And Hamilton said, well, it's necessary to have a bank run by politicians to do all this. Jefferson came back and said, it's not necessary, it's just convenient. We have banks. The government could put its money, tax money in banks. We don't need a government bank to run it. But anyway, George Washington signed the legislation and the story goes, what really convinced him was not the brilliance of Alexander Hamilton, but what convinced him was he had purchased a lot of land in Virginia near Washington, near what is now Washington, D.C., Mount Vernon. And they were in the process of moving the capital from New York to Virginia to create Washington, D.C. And George Washington said, if you extend the boundary of D.C. over to adjacent to my property in Mount Vernon, I will sign the legislation for your bank. He told the federalists. And so he did. And so he was a big real estate speculator. George Washington was. So we got the first bank of the United States. And the Jeffersonians had been arguing, well, this is going to create price inflation. It's going to corrupt politics. And it did exactly everything they said it would do. It created 72% price inflation in the first five years, just as suspected. And here's what Rothbard said about it, about the first bank of the United States. The bank of the United States promptly fulfilled its inflationary potential by issuing millions of dollars in paper money and demand deposits, pyramiding on top of $2 million in specie, gold and silver. The bank invested heavily in loans to the United States government. In addition to $2 million invested in the assumption of preexisting long-term debt assumed by the new federal government, the bank engaged in massive temporary lending to the government, which reached 6.2 million by 1796. The result of the outpouring of credit and paper money by the new bank of the United States was an increase in prices of 72% from 1791 to 1796. So it came into being in 1791. There was a 20-year charter and the United States Congress did not renew the charter because for these reasons it created price inflation. It created boom and bust cycles. And it corrupted politics. Eventually what it would do would give cheap loans to politicians who promised to support the continued funding of the Bank of the United States. Daniel Webster was on the retainer as a lawyer for the Bank of the United States and he threatened to leave and no longer represent the Bank of the United States unless they gave him his retainer and I quote a letter from him in one of my books. And so that's what it was like. But then what happened was the War of 1812 instigated by Henry Clay, he was the main warhawk for the War of 1812. And it's amazing to read when you read this history and you see how the American historians twist and spin history. Henry Clay was one of the main warhawks who wanted the War of 1812. He thought it would be a cakewalk. He said the Kentucky militia alone could take over Canada and they wanted to conquer Canada. They wanted to make Canada a state, an American state. And so blame him for the war, not only him, but him for the war. But then the biographies of Henry Clay at the end of the war, he was a member of the committee that negotiated the treaty with the British and they gave him high praise for being a great compromiser and they gave him the name, the Great Compromiser, because he compromised with the British as part of the committee to end the war. So they don't blame him for starting the war, but they praise him for ending the war. So if you read this history, you've got to keep an eye out for this sort of contradictions here because they're everywhere. It's been my experience in reading these hagiographies of these people. So the Bank of the United States went defunct. But then after the war, the politicians were persuaded to bring it back to monetize the debt to help pay the war debt. So it was brought back into existence with legislation in the year 1816 and came into operation in January of 1817. And who remembers the title of Murray Rothbard's dissertation? The Panic of 1819. So the bank is brought back into existence in January of 1817 and promptly creates the Panic of 1819. Just as the Jeffersonians always said it would. And I'll read you from Rothbard again. Let's see, 68. Here's what Murray said about this. The Bank of the United States precipitated the Panic of 1819, the first economic depression in the new country by a series of deflationary moves which sharply limited and contracted the loans and no-dissues of the bank branches. That was after their inflationary moves when they printed money to monetize the debt. And so he clearly made the connection in his book between the recreation of the Bank of the United States and the Panic of 1819. And he also got to say this was the first time in American history where there was large scale unemployment in the cities. And he points out that like in Philadelphia alone, the number of people employed in small manufacturing went, I think, from 9,500 people to 2,500 people. That's a pretty big decline in employment in one year in the city of Philadelphia during the Panic of 1819. And so it was given another 20-year charter beginning and operating in 1817. So you fast forward to the days when Andrew Jackson becomes president and Andrew Jackson is president and he had a big pitched battle with the Bank of the United States and he ended up not renewing the charter. He vetoed the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States even though by that time the Bank of the United States had accumulated all these special interests, all the Hamiltonian interests, the big business interests from New York, Philadelphia and Boston, New England. But he defeated them. He had a lot of help, but he finally defeated them and by vetoing this. And his veto statement, which is online, is quite remarkable. If you read in Murray Rothbard's History of Money and Banking in the United States, one of the students yesterday asked me about Andrew Jackson, what I thought of Andrew Jackson. Well, I want to think of Andrew Jackson. Well, as a young man in the military, he was ordered to murder seminal Indians, so he did that. And then in the military, he was ordered to administer the Trail of Tears, forcing the Cherokee Indians to walk to Oklahoma from North Carolina. And so he was no saint. But I praise him for vetoing the Bank of the United States. It's a good thing that he did. So you don't have to say that Andrew Jackson is my God to praise him. So he did a couple of good things and a lot of bad things that, you know, who among you cannot say that about yourself, you know, as far as that goes. But every time I've written something where I would praise Andrew Jackson for vetoing the Bank, I'd get bombarded with emails, but he killed the seminal Indians.   So what? So what? But who cares? And of course, all these people who write me have never committed a sin in their lives. They are angels, they're all perfect angels, otherwise known as libertarian purists, who Murray Rothbard did not like, by the way. So anyway, so Jackson did do that. He had to help from the people of Ohio, too. The Bank of the United States opened up two branches in the state of Ohio, and the state of Ohio did not want this bank run by politicians messing with their society and their politics and their economy. So they imposed a $50,000 per year tax per branch. This is in the 1830s on the Bank of the United States, and they refused to pay the tax. And so the governor of Ohio sent armed marshals into the bank vaults and scooped up the money and put it into big chests and carried it off. And so it was not just Andrew Jackson by himself. There were people in the states around the country that did not want this government run bank. They knew it was a menace. So he had a lot of help there. But his statement that I was going to mention, if you read the section of Murray's book on the Monetary History of the United States, has a little section on the Jacksonians. And a student yesterday asked me about Jackson, and I told her, well, for a brief introduction to who the Jacksonians were, read that 10 pages or so in the Monetary History of the United States, because it was the Jacksonians were libertarians, Murray Rothbard said. Not necessarily Jackson himself, but the Jacksonians. And he founded the Democratic Party of the 19th century in the U.S. Okay, so where is Jackson? He's page 72. He said this when he vetoed the Bank of the United States. It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions. Every man is equally entitled to protection by law, but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages, artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors, meaning government favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government. If government would confine itself to equal protection of the law, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me, that is to recharter the Bank of the United States, there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles. So that was a very libertarian statement there, saying that the central bank is a bank that basically grants exclusive privileges to the already rich and powerful at the expense of the rest of the country. And so, and this is why, after I read that years ago, I wondered, well, what does the history profession, the American history profession, think of this? They hate it. They hate it.  And for not every single historian, but the ones I looked up, they have sort of the general thinking is this is an awful statement. But I think it's wonderful. I think it's great. I don't even know if Jackson wrote it. You know, they all had speechwriters even back then, but it was a very libertarian statement in vetoing the Bank of the United States. So that's one reason why I think the economic nationalism has always been a curse. That's the first peg of economic nationalism as a central bank. And of course, you've heard a lot more about central banks this week already. The tariff, protectionist tariff. How many of you have ever heard of the infant industry argument for protectionism? Does that ring a bell?  It looks like about maybe about a half, possibly, infant industry. Well, that too came from Alexander Hamilton. He argued that the new industries had to be protected with tariffs or else they would never be able to compete. And so it was called the infant industry argument. And even from his time, the argument against that was that, well, the infant industries never tend to grow up. And that's certainly true of the steel industry. The steel industry was protected almost from the very beginning with tariffs. Certainly during the Civil War, when tariffs went on average of 50 to 60%, they were protected. All throughout the rest of the 19th century, the steel industry was protected. And fast forward to the election of George W. Bush as president, the very first thing he did in terms of economic policy was to impose new tariffs on steel. And so the infant steel industry that came about in the early 19th century is still being protected today. Still being protected today. And so that was Hamilton's baby. And so a part of this cabal, the economic nationalists, of course, they wanted a bank that would provide them with cheap credit. They wanted to be protected from international competition with high tariffs. And in 1824, the year 1824, they thought they were in the catbird seat. They had control of Congress. And they passed a tariff of 1824 that sharply increased tariffs from the 10 or 12% average rate to closer to 40% average rate. So there was a huge average tariff.  But the average, we're talking averages here. And this was the first time where there was a clear separation between North and South in America on economic policy. The votes in the U.S. Congress for the 1824 protectionist tariff. And this was the first really big protectionist tariff in America. 104 votes from the Northern States, three votes in favor from the Southern States. And the Senate, the United States Senate, there were 25 yes votes from Northern States, two from Southern States. And so there was a very clear North-South distinction here. The North being the champions of protectionism. That's where the manufacturing was, what little manufacturing there was in 1824. That's where it was taking place in the North. And the South was an agrarian society. And so they didn't see any benefit. What were the tariffs on? The tariffs were on the manufactured goods imported into America so that the Northern manufacturers would have less competition and can charge higher prices. And the Southerners saw this as, well, what's in it for us? We're paying higher prices for everything. And on top of that, they complained for decades that most of the money, the revenue, was being spent in the North anyway. So they didn't see it as it's very good for them at all. And also, since it was an agricultural society, the basic economics of it is that, of course, everybody would pay. Consumers in Massachusetts would pay more for farm tools and shoes. And consumers in Alabama would pay more for farm tools and shoes with higher tariffs on farm tools and shoes and blankets and clothes and things like that. But there was a secondary effect on farmers, not just Southern farmers or any farmers anywhere, that if we have protectionist tariffs and it impoverishes our trading partners in Europe, the Europeans have fewer dollars with which to purchase American exports. And what were they purchasing from Americans? Agricultural products primarily. That's what the exports were from America to Europe primarily. And so a lot of the business of the Southern farmers dried up whenever there were protectionist tariffs or Midwestern farmers or any other farmers and anywhere else. And so that's what they were complaining about in 1824. Right off the bat. No one was talking about slavery or any of that stuff in 1824. And so the economic nationalists were emboldened by this. And so in 1828, they passed an even bigger tariff. And the Southerners called it the Tariff of Abominations. It was known as the Tariff of Abominations. And it increased the average rate to about 48%. And that gave rise to the famous ordinance of nullification by South Carolina. South Carolinians said, we're not going to collect this tariff at Charleston Harbor. This is the 1828 tariff. Long before the Civil War, any of that stuff happened. And I'll read you a little bit about what this ordinance of nullification said. I'll read from my own book. On November 19th, 1832, a political convention was convened that adopted an ordinance of nullification declaring the Tariff Act was quote, unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States and violated the true meaning and intent thereof. It is therefore null, void, no law, nor binding upon this state, its officers or citizen. As of February 1, 1833, all enforcement of tariff collection in South Carolina is to be suspended. And, you know, the father of nullification was Jefferson and Madison fathers. The Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of the year 1798, they nullified the Sedition Act, which made free political speech illegal by the John Adams administration. And it was Jefferson and Madison who wrote these resolutions saying, we're not going to enforce this law within our states, within Kentucky and Virginia. And Jefferson was asked by a friend from Kentucky to write the resolution for Kentucky, even though he was a Virginian himself. And so that's the genesis of nullification. And it was used all throughout the 19th century by states north and south. The state of Ohio nullified the existence of the bank of the United States by doing what it did, for example. And so the South Carolinians were serious. They even gave the governor $160,000. This is 1832, $160,000 with which to purchase firearms to fend off federal tax collectors, in case they came down and tried to enforce the tax. And also part of the law said that any federal tax collector that showed up in South Carolina would be imprisoned and have his personal property confiscated, that he had whatever he had with him at the time, his money or whatever he had with him. So they were serious. And so they nullified it. And what ended up happening is they had a compromised tariff. And over the next 10 years, the tariff rate was diminished from the high rate of 48% average. And so what happened was by the time you get to the year 1857, so this was 1832, 25 years later, the average tariff rate in America was 15%, 15%. That was the high watermark of free trade in America in the 19th century. But the same cabal, the same gang, the economic nationalists were still there. At this time, it was the Whig Party under Henry Clay, and then the Republican Party took that over. The Republican Party created in 1852 when the Whig Party disappeared. And the Republicans were now the champions of economic nationalism. And they took advantage of the depression of the year 1857 to say, well, what we need to cure the depression is protectionist tariffs. And so they got the ball rolling and they ended up passing the moral tariff named after a Pennsylvania steel manufacturer, Justin Morrill, not Pennsylvania, Vermont. I mean, Vermont, I'm thinking of Thaddeus Stevens. That was another creep in the Republican Party. So anyway, the moral tariff passed during the 1859, 1860 Congress cast the House of Representatives. This is before any Southern state seceded or any of that, Lincoln was not elected president yet. So the House of Representatives passed that. And then the Senate passed it and President Buchanan signed it two days before Abe Lincoln became president. So it was signed into law. It passed the Senate and signed by the previous President Buchanan two days before Lincoln became president. Lincoln gives his First and All-Girl Address bends over backwards to promise not to disturb Southern slavery in his First and All-Girl Address. He says over and over again, I have no intention to do this and all my speeches, if you read all my past speeches, I've never said I had any intention. It would be unconstitutional for me to do it anyway. And then he supports in his First and All-Girl Address something called the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution named after an Ohio congressman named Corwin that would have made it prohibited the federal government from ever interfering in Southern slavery, the Corwin Amendment. And the Corwin Amendment had already passed the House and Senate and several states had already ratified the Corwin Amendment to this. But on the issue of tariffs, Lincoln was totally uncompromising. He says in his First and All-Girl Address, it is my duty to collect the duties and imposts tariffs. And then he said the next line is but beyond that, there will be no invasion of any state. So he literally threatened the military invasion of the Southern states over tariff collection. Unlike, you know, Andrew Jackson was the president during the tariff of abominations and he didn't invade. Lincoln did. Lincoln kept his word because the Southern states, when they seceded, they no longer intended to send money to Washington, D.C. They had their own government in Richmond and so he used the words invasion and bloodshed in his First and All-Girl Address to describe what would happen to any state, the people of any state that refused to continue to pay the tariff, which had just been doubled two days earlier. So the rate of federal taxation was doubled two days earlier and there was no income tax. The tariff was the main tax. It raised over 90% of all federal revenue. And so Lincoln would pass 10 tariff-increasing bills during his time, during his administration. So by the time you get to the end of the Civil War, the American Civil War, the average tariff rate was over 50% 50. And it remained in that range 50% to 60% until the income tax came into being in the year 1913. So the whole latter part of the 19th century, when the Republican party had a monopoly in government, even one book that I cite in my research it's called Yankee Leviathan by Richard Benzel, B-E-N-S-E-L he points out that he couldn't think of any other government in a world that had more monopoly power for a longer period of time than the Russian Bolsheviks or the Mexican government if you look at in history, it's a monopoly government. And so the economic and nationalists were finally in charge, finally in charge and they did what they always wanted to do since the time of Hamilton. But before that President after President had failed to get this done one of the funnier episodes was when Henry Clay thought he finally had it made in the year 1840 they elected a Whig president William Henry Harrison and the Whigs controlled the Congress they were ready to go to town with high protectionist tariffs bring the bank back and start internal improvement subsidies and then William Henry Harrison, my favorite president, died a month after he was inaugurated which of course is why he's my favorite president and so his vice president was John Tyler who turned out to be a Jeffersonian and he vetoed all this stuff so they kicked John Tyler out of the Whig party and burned him in effigy in front of the White House and they did everything Henry Clay did everything but get down on his stomach and pound his arms and legs in front of the White House and scream like a baby over this if you read the history of what happened they kicked him out of his own party and he's the president of the United States a man without a party so that's why by the way there's a book called Recarving Rushmore by Ivan Elan that ranks all the presidents in the United States according how good a job they did in liberty and property and his number one president is John Tyler he ranks number one of all the presidents who's ever heard of John Tyler anyway that's why he's the most libertarian of presidents so therefore he's a bad guy basically when historians rank presidents it's mostly whoever kills the most people and raises the most tax that's Wilson, Roosevelt, Lincoln those are all the good guys the third plank which they finally got also internal improvements they've been arguing about that since the days of Hamilton economic nationalism that was part of Trump's speech in Louisville infrastructure Hamilton wanted that Jefferson's Treasury Secretary also came out Albert Gallatin with a plan for this but Jefferson said the Constitution first to do this so they didn't do it John Quincy Adams when he was president he said after he was president his biggest failure was they didn't spend any federal money on internal improvements James Madison when he was president his last day in office the last thing he did was to veto a spending bill that included internal improvement subsidies on it Andrew Jackson opposed that when he was president up to 1830 then I just told you the story about 1840 so they didn't get it then either so by the time you get to the American Civil War period there was almost no money, federal money spent on any of these internal improvements roads canals and railroads at all and some of the states had toyed with this but it was such a disaster such a boondoggle so much corruption that every state except Massachusetts had amended its constitution by 1960 to prohibit the use of tax dollars for anything any corporation did it was not just illegal but unconstitutional by state constitution because they had such a horrible experience with all this so you get to the Civil War the southern Democrats who had always been the primary opponents of all this were gone and the Whigs were in control but now they're called Republicans and so the war is on April of 1861 the war starts June of 1861 Abe Lincoln calls Congress back to Washington DC you know all those New England Yankees who were up there back in Boston had to get back on the horse and go back to Washington DC because there's an urgent matter to attend to okay there's a 60,000 man army in Virginia what's the urgent matter getting the Pacific Railway bill passed that's why they were called back that's where they're called back I mean there's a 60,000 man Confederate army in Virginia on massing and here's Congress say well we've got to get the legislation started to subsidize the transcontinental railroads which they did and so that was definitely high on the agenda they did they began subsidizing the transcontinental railroads Lincoln himself had purchased some tracks of land in Council Bluffs Iowa in 1857 and when they passed the Pacific Railway bill it gave the president the right to determine where they would start building the transcontinental railroad to California anyone want to take a wild guess where Abe Lincoln chose to start building the transcontinental railroad Council Bluffs Iowa of course so he must have made a killing on that real estate deal there as did all the luminaries of the Republican party and I'll read you just one short passage about this let's see there's a historian of the American West a man named D. Brown he was passed away a few years ago but the historian of the American West he wrote all these books about the American Indians the history of the American West and one of his books is called Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow about the building of the transcontinental railroads okay and here's one of the things he said when Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway bill he assured the fortunes of a dynasty of American families the Brewsters, the Bushnells, Alcots Harkers, Harrison's, Trowbridge's he was on and on, my name's all these families and then he talks about the big shots in the Republican party Congressman Thaddeus Stevens received a block of Union Pacific stock in exchange for his vote for the subsidies he also demanded as a condition of his yes vote the insertion of a clause in the law requiring that all iron used in the construction of said railroad to be American manufacturer he was an iron manufacturer from Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Oaks Ames who with his brother Oliver manufactured shovels in Massachusetts became a loyal ally of the Union Pacific Railroad and helped to pressure the 1864 Pacific Railway Act through the Congress and he was a shovel manufacturer and it must have taken a hell of a lot of shovels to dig out the railroad tracks from Iowa to California and so a lot of the members of Congress in the Republican party became enormously wealthy from this and so they finally got their way and this promptly created the biggest political corruption scandal in American history up to that point it was called the Credite Mabillier scandal and that was the name of a company kind of a French word a Credite Mabillier scandal where they set up this company the Credite Mabillier I'm not sure where that word comes from, the title comes from and they would do such things as they were getting government money and so to build the railroad and then this company would supply them with rails, iron rails and the ties and things like that and they would sell them to themselves at grossly inflated prices and they would also buy the votes of members of Congress by giving them shares of stock for say $5 $5 a share and within a couple of weeks when the flood of tax dollars went into the company the shares would be worth $100 and so he had all these members of Congress who became instantly millionaires through all this and it finally was exposed one of the members of this scam apparently got ticked off at another member of the scam over something and he went to a reporter and he gave the reporter the names of all the members of Congress the shares of stock and the whole thing blew up and the whole country knew about this and a lot of people went to jail for it exactly the type of thing that Jeffersonians always argued about that the curse of economic nationalism that it would lead to rampant corruption waste of tax dollars inefficiency in the building and the two railroads that the government built at the time they declared that they were finished with the job and the great James J Hill came along and built the great Northern Railroad at the same time with no government subsidies at all and it was the most profitable and most efficient railroad by far and I have about one minute left here and this is basically what happened with the Transcontinental Railroad this is my map of the United States here's the United States here's Iowa here's Lincoln's property I'll put a picture of Lincoln here here's Abe Lincoln he's happy he's a big smile because he made so much money on that property and the railroad line of the government subsidized railroad line looks kind of like this they're in California because in return for congressional votes or even support by the territories the politicians and the territories they had to promise to run a separate line in your community and return for your vote so they did that James J Hill's line was very different the great Northern here's my map of the United States here's Lincoln again here's Abe Lincoln this was more like that if I had more time and I talk about this in my classes they actually put up on the computer you can find the map of the great Northern route and they really do look like the spaghetti thing that I just drew on here and because James J Hill was a private entrepreneur unsubsidized he did even get land grants he paid for the rights away through Indian territory with cattle or whatever they could trade for and of course his objective was the most efficient shortest route to the west coast because that's the most profitable and so he did and I happened to be in Montana Northern Montana a couple summers ago and I went to a restaurant they had a second floor bar and went out to the outside seating on the bar I sit there and there was a train track in front of it and right in front on the side of the train it said Great Northern, the Great Northern Route it's still there, still operating in Montana but James J Hill it's thought that he was one of the characters in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrug and James J Hill is what one of them is patterned after so anyway that's my truncated story about the curse of economic nationalism how it came to America and of course once this scam was proven to be a recipe for accumulating great wealth and power governments all over the world have ever since imitated it and they've also recruited intellectuals like Trump has to tell stories about how wonderful this is trying to make people think that a set of government policies that benefits politically connected business people at the expense of you is really in your best interest that you really should support that and vote for that but if you understand a little bit about elementary economics you won't be fooled by this scam of economic nationalism and that's all I'm going to do for now and you can let off one more howl wolf's howl if you want thank you


Such a great woman having such a status. How was her relationship with her father, the holy prophet alaihi salam, in terms of obviously at the beginning of the message of Islam? He went through a lot of grievances, a lot of problems, wars, people mocking him, etc. How did she deal with that growing up, obviously losing her mother at a young age also? Well, if he's talking about ummu abihah, as he mentioned so many times, that she's the mother of her father, I don't think you can get an accolade as wonderful as that. But even more beautiful is for him to say that she's a part of me. So it's not just, we're not talking just a physical part. This is the continuation of the Abrahamic light. Shi'i imamology and authority is not simply discussing Arabic personage. Some people try and think that Tashayyua is this discussion of a group of Arabic personalities or a family. No, the mystical divine covenant where God wanted the light of Abraham to continue in the loins of particular chosen people. Allah said in the last of Adam and Noah and Ali Ibrahim, the family of Abraham were chosen, members of them, not those who perform zolm, rather those who were the very embodiment of justice and dignity and mercy and the manifestation of God's attributes on earth. When Rasulullah says, It's not a physical thing. There is actually a continuation of the message, the understanding of the Lord continues from Rasulullah to his daughter Fatima. The way to speak about the Lord continues from Rasulullah to his daughter Fatima. But when you're mentioning those early days, they're very difficult for Rasulullah when she's born, he's in the middle of the most difficult turbulent period of his life. And she has to witness unbelievable amounts of oppression against him. Famous ayah in the Quran, In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, have you seen the one who disrespects our servant while he's in his prayer? Abu Jahl, as the viewers all know, Abu Jahl used to throw feces on the head of Rasulullah, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Who is it that used to clean that feces but Fatima? You find, for example, that when Um Jamil, the wife of Abu Lahab used to throw stones at Rasulullah, who would clean the injuries but Fatima? But I don't want Fatima to be known as great simply because she's the daughter of so-and-so or the wife of so-and-so, or because she cleaned her dad's wounds and injuries. There are many girls who had to see their fathers oppressed. There are many out there who have defended their parents when their parents have been oppressed. There are many out there whose fathers have said, oh, if it's not for that daughter of mine, I would be no one. Many have received similar accolades, Seja, but I can't sit here and say that Fatima Tezahra is amazing because of this, because you and I both have heard our dads have in one way or the other praised our own sisters like this. But there are other traditions which highlight to you who Fatima is in terms of her closeness to Allah, not whose daughter or whose wife she is. There are many, when they begin their lectures, when they talk about the greatest woman in Islamic history and that is Fatima Tezahra, whenever they talk about her, they're like, Fatima Tezahra is great because she is the wife of Imam Ali. Or do you know whose daughter she is? This is the daughter of Rasulullah. Yes, and that's great by default. That's not great because you've actually achieved anything. That's my default. You happen to be born in the right place at the right time.


Hi and welcome to the session, I am Deepika here. Let's discuss a question, differentiate the following with respect to x. Log of log x, where x is greater than 1. Let's start the solution. Let y is equal to log of log x where x is greater than 1. Therefore dy by dx is equal to now derivative of log x is 1 over x therefore derivative of log of log x is equal to 1 over log x into derivative of log x that is into 1 over x. So this is equal to dy by dx is equal to 1 over x log x where x is greater than 1. Hence the answer for the above question is dy by dx is equal to 1 over x log x where x is greater than 1. Hence this is the answer for the above question. I hope the question is clear to you, why and take care.


What's up everyone it's your girl Kenzie here from Layton Sports Cards and I'm ripping 2022 Panini Spectra football hobby four box half case break number 15 pick your team got Andrew a Vikings Andy K Patriots Barton L Washington Bruce B Bears and Jags Damian V with the Giants David F Chiefs Dennis F Chargers Dylan J Titans Edgar B with the Colts and Broncos and Texans Edward P with the Cowboys and Ravens Gary M Lyons Henrik J Dolphins James C Niners J J with the Seahawks Jeffrey H Steelers Jeremy H Packers John W Browns Jonathan L Jets Klaus W Saints Kyle B Rams Luke S Falcons Michael K Bills Mitch M Cardinals Peter M Bucks Taylor W Raiders Timothy V Panthers Tony J with the Bengals and William L with the Eagles all right best of luck everyone thank you very much we've got one of these left up next one two three four six to go on the next one again all teams on sale there is the link for that all right here we go good luck just a little bit behind right now may eventually catch up not a big deal we've been catching up almost every time we break though yeah Kevon Tibero that is 17 of 99 Giants there's 15 right yes Isaiah likely on these silver rookie we have Maurice Jones drew two out of 60 on the epic legends I haven't heard that name in forever the great name though yeah and 37 out of 60 your rookie Otto Tyler uh Allie Alligier Alligier Allie Alligier nice Alligier there you go Falcons they go Luke we have Justin Fields on the die cut four out of 20 bears pickins uh rookie for these Steelers eight out of ten nice one here nice patches rising rookie of Trey McBride Cardinals three color three color and we've got Patriots 66 and 75 RPA of Taekwong Thornton I got you working over there today spectra they uh watch it no mill the mafia here seven of eight on the splatter Texas National Chargers is like every single different spectacular Justin Jefferson five out of ten Vikings four out of 99 monumental memorabilia Johan Dotson for the commanders and we've got one of five illustrious legends of Doug Williams there you go commanders one of five on the psychedelic that's cool on card Otto too love those all right last box box one here we've got famous James three out of 60 for the Saints Clyde Edwards a lair on the base we've got 22 of 75 next era three color patch Malik Willis for the Titans what's up Michael and 104 of 125 Garrett Wilson for the Jets Jets been hot in the spectra I mean there's so many darn rookies that they've got so all right box two get everyone one more spectra break up next it's another four box half case break all the remaining teams are on sale get that one filled up breaks right after this Wes Welker he was a stud to 40 of 40 what's that oh they're extremely junior silver rookie you know who he was drafted by um I'm not sure 14 out of 15 max impact Michael Pittman junior was he originally came up with adult and we've got 87 of 99 on the radiant rpa Wanda Robinson giants then after spectra we've got some mosaic football breaks city lamb on the silver 51 of 75 in dime space we have 66 of 99 triple relic building blocks rookie for the bills jeans cook we have a redemption good luck we've got Russell Wilson retrospect autographs meta wow that is going to be out of 25 let me just check the checklist to make sure that it's going to be um a bronco Russell Wilson card number six uh that is a seahawks hit it is Russell Wilson auto retrospect plus parallels card six for the seahawks considering it's called retrospect that probably makes a little bit of sense yeah I figured it might be he's got two seahawks cards and the rest are broncos and this is one of them so this is seahawks yeah did not have the season everyone thought he would that's for sure Michael Carter for the jet 16 of 99 oh we've got rookie aura james cook on the splatter that is seven out of eight for the bills enjoy your chili don i'm a little jealous that sounds delicious see you next time man 51 of 99 epic legends Marcus Allen chiefs and three of five champion signatures chris long there you go eagles i love these champion signatures that's sick ran out almost a little bit on the first part of that auto on the ink three of five go birds god sauce little saucy 14 to 25 for the jets james cook rookie base we've got 48 out of 60 triple relic of um chris olave for the saints at least i'm there i haven't seen him too much yet today 14 out of 15 we've got the orange damian pierce rpa texans damian pierce on the orange ink let me stick on a bangles car all the orange like the green for the jets down to five on the next break everyone five to go carmel's browns broncos colts and bucks there is the link all teams are on sale all righty here we go box three the birds having a great great saturday we've got travis kelsey on the orange die cut three out of 15 he did me well in fantasy too oh yeah calcy rookie uh uh spectrus of david bell that is 40 of 50 for the browns five building blocks for the commander's brand robinson jr uh you received a damage card like was it damaged in the mail or you think it was damaged like pulled like packed fresh what are you um which one there monty seven of nine here's another legend icons marshal falk st louis rams on this one that's sweet nice sit there um i would you have to save the wrapping and then um try and get a hold of you know either tops or panini or you know whatever um brand it was 98 of 99 jj watt for the cardinals and then they'll most likely ask you to send the wrapping as well as the card devin loyde rookie for the jacks and it may take quite a bit to get it replaced not going to lie 47 of 99 we've got next era patch of drake london sharp looking card yeah no problem and then we've got commanders sam howl rpa that is one of 75 sam howl usually there's like a little section on a website where you can you know contact them to let them know it's damaged and then they'll kind of eventually get back to you let you know danny gray rookie 47 of 99 but i would definitely reach out before just shipping them the card so they know what it is they've got antonio gates on the silver sunday spectacle 35 of 60 kaderia's tony for the giants now chief and super bowl insert for the box simian rise i love these uh insert on us a little dimple right there right down there on that card unfortunately bucks pack box three we've got splatter frank gore eight of eight niners we have here wow 7500 points 7500 points that's a that's a big chunk of change right there my gosh wow that's like that's like 800 dollars worth of points that is a big chunk of points that will be random off to all at the end mark andrew's uh 56 and 99 tirey hill i forgot what product it was rip i was ripping but i pulled a 15 000 points that's the highest that's the highest i've ever seen i mean i was like we're curious so there are people in the in the comments that went and looked at the most recent cop it was like 1200 worth of points i'm like that's crazy we pulled 2500 points wait what did we just pull 75 we pulled 2500 points uh on we'll be yesterday for any morning yeah jaylon waddle that is 14 out of 25 and they said it was like 200 bucks so wow von miller silver broncos yeah that that'll get you a decent auto i would hope 71 of 99 high voltage dk mecca that'll buy you like almost two white sparkle packs right there yeah and we've got 30 of 50 rookie auto of lewis sign for the vikings kind of i can't believe you pulled a 15 000 i've never seen that yeah yeah that was that was the one time i've ever done that sauce gardener rookie 19 out of 75 got curt warner base uh nine a j brown on the max impact in a mag of points card we magged it yesterday yeah and uh we've got 82 out of 99 rpa aspiring of tyron davis price tyrion we max 1500 we got a max of $200 that's crazy it was 1500 yeah it was 1500 i said bruce 10 out of 30 for the rams 15 rookie spec uh specters of malik willis that is 18 out of 50 uh catalyst mac jones on the three-color patch that is seven out of 15 the trade's doing well this pack 30 out of 125 champions signatures on car mike rabel that's sick let me go pads back to back all right last pack here i'm gonna take a picture of it besides it in the group yeah we've got a redemption travis etion jr 10 out of 40 uh errod rogers base yeah 19 of 25 next era patch gary wilson for the jets and another redemption good luck everyone god gary wilson radiant rookie patch signatures card number 12 going to the jets jets jets jets all right again i'm gonna set up this random for 7500 points whopping 7500 points that's crazy do those sell pretty well too they can sell on even yeah if you don't want to redeem all right got our random we've got all 32 teams again top team after the random we'll take home the 7500 points let's roll our dice four times good luck everyone one two three and four go into the giants giants taking home the 7500 points congrats all right let's do a quick recap these first we have uh a j brown eagles garret wilson jets mac jones patriots uh dk metcalf seahawks um terry kell dolphins kaderious tony giant citric london falcons uh brian robinson jr commanders chrysalov a saint smarkis allen chiefs james cook veils uh trey mcbride cardinals michael pittman jr coles melik willis titans john dottson commanders um marise jones drew jets autos we have the garret wilson redemption jets uh divas price niners mike ravel um patriots louis scene uh viking simian rice um buccaneers i cannot think of that team for the life of me sam howl washington martial fall for the rams we got demian pierce for the texans chrysalon for the birds seahawks redemption here of rossel wilson very nice card there that's not that one um we've got wandell robinson giants typhon thorton patriots uh doug williams washington garret wilson jets and tyler alligier alligier for the falcons and then um again we had the 7500 points that will be going to the giants all righty that'll do it for number 15 we got number 16 coming up with a few


Hi everybody, happy Sunday. I'm Joe coming at you with 2022 Gold Rush Premier Player Series 2, two box break, random team number three from jaspyscasebreaks.com. This gives away, this helps fill the baseball mixers. It's gonna give away two spots in that mixer. Now we just gotta do one more if we fill it in time and then we are in breaks filled. All right, but first the break itself. That's the first dice roll, second dice roll will be the giveaway part. Big thanks everybody here for making it happen. There are the teams right here. Let's roll it, randomize it, four and a five, nine times. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and a ninth and final time. After nine, here's everybody here. Four and a five, nine times for the teams. One, two. All right, here's the first half of the list right here. And there's the second half of the list right here. And let's sort by team, alphabetically. And let's just print and rip. There's the final print out. Let's see what we have in here. This is pretty fun. There's, this one has two graded cards. I was gonna say usually it's one graded and then one not graded, but this feels like there's two graded cards. PSA 10, it's Ronald Acuna Jr. PSA DNA certified auto grade, Gemmin 10. For the bravos, Dusty with the braves. Nice. All right, this is a Beckett grade, nine-five. And it's Brendan McKay, tops now, summer camp, Brendan McKay. Grade nine-five for the Rays, Dusty with the Rays. I feel like Injuries has kind of delayed his, his emergence into the MLB, but it's supposed to be one healthy. Well, he counts maybe a, maybe a late bloomer. Just keep an eye on him. All right, another two graded cards here, it feels like. Another Beckett grade, another nine-five. And it's Louise Robert, nice. Louise Robert rookie card from 2020 tops, base set photo variations, wearing sunglasses. I haven't really been keeping track of what's, how's Louise Robert been doing this year? Let's go find some of his stats. He's having a pretty solid season. He's already, he's hitting 296, 29 hits, four homers. He's got it, 11 RBI, six stolen bases. There you go, OPS of almost 800. The last one here. I don't know, J-Dog, we may have to, I may have to check in with him for a wellness check. All right, we got a 10 here. And it's Ken Griffey Jr., nice. 10 on the autograph, authentic autograph from a 1989 FLIR card. Nice Ken Griffey Jr. auto, Seattle Mariners edition, Steve Birch. All right, there you go, nice. So let's flip back to the, oh, in the White Sox, Louise Robert, by the way, that's for you, Carl. Carl gets that one. All right, now let's see who's gonna win those two mixer spots here. Let's grab everybody's names from one down to 30. New dice, new list. So again, just the top two, so it'll be a lot of sad faces here after six times, three into three. One, two, three, four, five, and sixth and final time. So 28 sad people, a lot of sad people, especially Josh Melton, who was very, very close, but not quite, Josh, thank you though for trying. Thanks everybody for trying. Top two though, really happy. Steve Birch is really happy, and so is Mike Tower. There you go, congrats to the both of you. You will be in the baseball mixer. I'm Joe for jasphyscasebreaks.com. I'll see you next time for the next one, bye-bye.


When moms make more, they usually weigh the child support. There's usually no child support. In 50-50 situations where dads make more, they most always pay the child support. It's rare that a woman has a child support order that she actually pays. It's rare.  If men can't pay their child support and they're put in jail, I think that doesn't make any sense. If a dad's behind child support, why are you gonna put him in jail? That he can't work and lose his job? Well, the state makes money if every day he's there.


I interviewed her after she qualified at the Open. She was so pumped. Yeah, just to make it to the main draw. Just to qualify, just to be in the big show. I mean, when you turn pro in anything, it shouldn't be about I want to go from 20,000 followers to 2 million followers. Obviously, in tennis and sports, you grow up quicker, because of expectations and pressure and all these teams and things that are around. But you just keep the focus on what you've done to get there and where you're going to keep going. A lot of young players, too, when they get a win like that, besides making lots of money and things that are life changes, the worst thing sometimes that can happen, you can get satisfied. But greatness doesn't get satisfied. And that's where you, as Zach says, you need that great team around you to help guide you, to push you, to even double down, to work harder, to make even changes to get better.


All right, we are going to get started here. So it is my great pleasure to introduce Anthony Fronte from FTI, a man of many accomplishments. And we will start chatting here, and I'll ask some starter questions, but I hope that all of you will have questions to ask Anthony as well. We can have a discussion of many relevant, timely, and challenging policy and legal questions that Anthony has encountered during his multifaceted long career in security. So with that, if I may, I'll ask you to, if you'd be so kind, share us your, share us the story of your career, how you got involved in security, what you wanted to do when you grew up, and how you ended up before us in your current role. Great, yeah. So thanks for having me here today, and thanks for joining. It's good to see some old friends in the audience. I always love coming to Black Hat and DEF CON for exactly that reason, it feels like a reunion. But the question was, how did I start my career? And believe it or not, I've been working in security, specifically cyber security, for 30 years. And many in the audience, especially those in the front row, are going to look at me and say, how is that even possible? 30 years in security. I started when I was 10. I started hacking computers, 10 years old in my living room, after my folks purchased an Apple 2C Plus. Many of you are in the audience smiling and laughing because you all know the Apple 2C Plus now sits in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. It's quite a dinosaur. Anyway, I started when I was 10 and continued as a hobbyist through college. When I graduated, I started working in private practice as an ethical hacker at a big fore consulting firm. Loved what I did, worked with a bunch of like-minded individuals. We got paid to break into corporations. Unfortunately, I was living and working in New York City at that time and had experienced firsthand the effects of September 11th, 2001. And it really changed my outlook on life and some of my motivations. So I actually went back to work shortly after 9-11 and quit my job and went back to school to get a master's degree in computer science and then joined the FBI. I was pretty passionate about the national security mission and supporting the United States in that capacity. So I quit my job in private practice, joined the FBI, and they sent me shortly after that they sent me down to Quantico, Virginia where I was at New Agents Training. Graduated from New Agents Training down in Quantico and they sent me right back to New York City where I worked as a cyber security special agent investigating all cyber matters related to national security. I was hunting terrorists online and spies online, quite an opportunity for me. As you can appreciate, it was extremely fascinating work. Proud to say that in my nine years as a field agent in New York City, I worked thousands of incidents, some major breaches, major compromise at NASDAQ in 2010, for example, and then also some really small breaches. But safe to say, definitely had my fair share of security incidents in New York City and loved every minute of it. In 2013, I promoted, I went to FBI headquarters in Washington, DC where I served as the chief of staff for FBI Cyber Division, overseeing administratively and operationally all matters within the division, supporting the assistant director. That was a fascinating time. Was able to live through and help navigate some of the most significant breaches or incidents of our time during that period from 2013 to 2015. Notable one was the destructive malware attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment. And then I would say, I was very proud that in 2015, leadership at the FBI promoted me again and sent me over to the White House to serve in the Obama administration as an apolitical appointee. I was detailed as an FBI special agent to the National Security Council where I worked as the director for Cyber Incident Response. And many people say, you know, what was your job? I was very fortunate. My role on the National Security Council was I worked on a team of cyber security practitioners. And my role was to choreograph U.S. government response efforts to any significant cyber event that affected U.S. interests, foreign or domestic. So as you can appreciate, it was a very busy time. And one of the reasons why I'm here today is because during my time in the National Security Council, I and a few colleagues led the preparedness and response efforts leading into the 2016 U.S. presidential election specific to cyber security. I'm happy to talk about that. It's a very relevant topic, especially as we go into the 2020 U.S. presidential election. And I can assure you the threats that we faced then and continue to face today are indeed real. And it's something that we should take very seriously. So that said, you know, happy to have a conversation. Welcome audience participation. So if I may, I'll ask to follow up on the point that you just raised. What can you tell us about the mindset, the approach, the analysis that happened around combating the Russian interference threats that were happening and continue to happen in 2016? So from my optics on the National Security Council and within the U.S. government, there was really, I would say, a two-pronged approach. There was the massive coordinated misinformation campaign, right, the influence operations, which have serious effects. And then there was also the very tactical probing operation that the Russian government partook in. And, you know, it's very easy to confuse one or the other. But I think it's really important to understand that both were taking place in real time. And the effects of both operations were definitely significant and quite possibly still ongoing today. So you mentioned that you got your start in security very early. Can you tell us about some of the adventures, your earliest adventures and whether you were ahead of your time and always stayed perfectly in line with what would be the standards today of slightly transgressive conduct? Or were you more experimental as many people were? Yeah, I was definitely experimental and really just super curious about security. I mean, when I started, the internet in your home didn't even exist. I remember when we finally did get the internet and at home it was very significant day, right? When I first started, it was just programming. You know, I started writing my first programs at 10 years old. And in addition to writing my own, I started to look at other people's code and try to break their code. But it was all curiosity, looking to push the limits. I did a few times throughout my career discover certain things where I would present them to senior folks and they would say, oh, wait, show me that again. How did you do that? And of course, anyone who's ever hacked a computer knows it's a very rewarding moment. You feel very proud and I'm proud to say that I felt proud at those times. But it just continued. And I will say that I don't regret it for one minute, of course. When I did quit my job in private practice, enjoying the US government and really helping the United States combat these threats online, I don't regret it for a minute, of course. It was extremely rewarding. And I'm proud to say that myself and my colleagues in the FBI made a considerable impact on these fronts, specifically with respect to terrorism and intelligence operations. So DOJ is currently proposing innovative ways of potentially building out engagement with workforce development and keeping kids on the non-intrusion side of the line. Do you have any thoughts about how to encourage building talent while still staying out of legal trouble as the computer front abuse act exists today? Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm glad DOJ is taking that stance. When I was in the US government, I was beating that drum for many years. And unfortunately, I was dismissed for many years. But I do think government leaders are finally realizing that they need to really work with private sector to continue to develop this workforce. The cybersecurity workforce, as you all know, is extremely lacking. There is just not enough really good talent to staff the roles that are needed, whether it's in the government or in private practice. So I think it's smart for governments around the world to establish programs with private practice entities, maybe develop a sabbatical program. Two years of private practice employees can go work for the US government or the government and their home government. And vice versa, I think there not only will be a knowledge exchange, a very beneficial knowledge exchange, but there will also be the ability to train, cross train in different industries, private versus public. But then also keep people fresh, keep people on their toes, let people peek behind the curtain, working for the US government, and realize, OK, this is what it's all about. Then go back to private practice. And vice versa, I definitely think it would be extremely beneficial. And I think you would see less of a brain drain in the government or in private practice. So you mentioned working on the NASDAQ investigation. What were some of the challenges that you experienced in conducting that investigation and the context of a market integrity-driven compromise that presented different concerns that other kinds of compromises that you had dealt with before? Or was it functionally the same from this perspective? I hate to say it, having worked, again, having worked thousands of these, not only in the capacity of the US government, but also in private practice, these incidents really have a, first of all, no two incidents are alike, but they do have common themes. And while NASDAQ did, in 2010, experience an incident, it's not unique to NASDAQ. It's happening every single day. I think the latest statistic I read was, in 2019, right now, every day two organizations are experiencing a significant incident, two, two a day. So that's pretty significant. So we certainly don't want to pick on any single one organization or highlight them as being deficient, because this is an evolving threat. And it can happen very quickly, very easily. These systems are designed to allow organizations to operate more efficiently, more effectively, globally. And to use a very overly used term, you're strong as your weakest link. And some of these organizations experience that firsthand. Is it your sense that financial services and market makers and other key players in financial infrastructure learned from the NASDAQ compromise and did a more aggressive, self-reflective exercise around not being the next NASDAQ, or what's your sense of the evolution of NASDAQ? And again, I wouldn't even single out NASDAQ. I think financial services in particular, they're constantly learning from their peers, not only in financial services, but across all sectors. They're extremely well-funded, they're regulated, they have responsibilities being in the industry. So they're constantly learning every single day. I think what we're seeing now is more and more organizations are experiencing these types of incidents, and not because it's a fault of their own, but just because it's a result of the threat constantly evolving and people having different types of motivations, whether it's personal data, financial information, sabotage, to name a few. So you also mentioned the Sony compromise. And so that presents perhaps a different kind of model of the motivations in particular that you were talking about. Can you give us a little flavor for what was happening in the Sony situation as you were investigating it? Yeah, so Sony Pictures Entertainment was a very significant matter. Really for two purposes. One, because it was a nation-state actor, North Korea, to be specific. And I would have said four or five years ago if someone said that North Korea was going to be one of the top four cyber threats in the world, I would have probably laughed it off thinking how, but they really are. And many don't know this, but North Korea affected the breach or the destructive attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment with a Windows 95 machine. And I'm sure many of you won't be surprised to know that it was an unlicensed version of Windows 95. So my point is, one was the fact that North Korea affected this destructive malware attack. The other learning factor of the destructive malware attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment is just the effects on an organization. Like many people think, okay, the computer systems were down, what does that mean? Employees at Sony went to work that day and they went to badge in and the gate to the parking lot wouldn't go up. It wouldn't open, so they had to manually raise it and go in, then they parked. Then they couldn't badge into doors because the key card readers didn't work. Then they went to their desk and couldn't get on their systems. So what did most employees do? What I would do is say, let's go get a cup of coffee. They walked to the cafeteria, got a cup of coffee and went to pay and they said, the systems are down. You can't pay, so cash only. Well, I don't have cash. Well, you know, pay me tomorrow. And this continued through the end of the week. Friday was pay day. People showed up for work and said, you didn't pay me, to accounting. Accounting looked at them and said, well, who are you? They said, I've worked here for 20 years. They say, I'm sorry, we have no record of you. Our systems are down. So these are real effects of a destructive malware attack like that and it was a real wake up call in the security industry with respect to, one, don't underestimate your adversary or the global stage of adversaries that could exist. And two, of course, from a security perspective, we all know, and I'm sure everyone in this room can appreciate, there's no silver bullet. We're never gonna be able to prevent an incident from occurring, but what we wanna aim to do is prevent incidents from being large incidents. If you're gonna get hit with ransomware, have it hit two or three machines, not two or three hundred machines or two or three thousand machines. So keep incidents small. So that's just an example of the real life effects that took place on the studio a lot of Sony Pictures Entertainment. So in light of what you saw in that case of Sony, does it worry you that we're building a whole society and a whole global economy driven by a high degree of inter-reliance on systems that are vulnerable to similar compromise potentials? Of course.  That's why I'm in the industry working very hard with governments, the United States government, foreign governments, practitioners like everyone in this room, no single person or no single government can do it alone, right? We'd be naive to think that. And I think I can say this, having been a formerly US government employee that the US government now is realizing that, hey, we have unique skills and access, but we can't do it alone. We have to rely on private sector practitioners because they are equally as skilled and have great access and sometimes better access than the government and together we're just gonna be that much stronger. So in light of that need for future cooperation and the challenges we face, where do you see the future of security going? What are your sort of top two or three threats that you see looming on the horizon the next five years and what would you advise us to be on the lookout for or most actively trying to mitigate to make sure that we don't turn into one big Sony pictures? Yeah, yeah. So it's a good point and actually it starts to what you said earlier, this continued growth of interdependencies on these systems. You know, it's funny. I gave you a quick snapshot of my background. One thing I forgot was that for 14 years I taught undergraduate and graduate level computer science courses at Fordham University and every semester I would start my course and challenge my students and say, name one aspect of your life that does not involve a computer network and the students would scratch their heads and they'd raise their hand and say, I came to class and I'd say, no, the subway you took is controlled by a computer network. Someone would say, well, I drove my car and I'd say, no, the street lights are controlled by a computer network. So you get where I'm going with this. The point is that every single thing we do even 15 years ago is controlled by a computer network and to your point, it's only going to continue to grow and become integrated more and more into our lives. Smart home technology, voice assistant technologies. I mean, all these things are great, right? And I work with my clients every single day. I love these tools and I think we should embrace them for their conveniences, for their comforts. The only thing I tell my clients is, let's do it safely, right? Let's embrace IoT, let's just do it safely, right? I'm sure everyone got here via airplane or car, right? Came to Vegas.   You would say, oh, that's great. I want to ride that airplane. But then I'd say, oh, by the way, it's not very safe. Most people would back away and say, I'll go the old way and spend a few extra hours in the plane. My point is, is that the more and more as our world becomes interconnected, this is great opportunity, opportunity to grow, generate more revenue, become more efficient. We just want to do it safely. That's my biggest worry. I'd say to put it in a nutshell, it is IoT. People ask me all the time, what is the biggest thing that keeps you up all night? Up all night. Some people say, oh, an attack on our power grid, right? That's an effect. The power going out is an effect of the attack. What's gonna cause that attack? I think, in my opinion, is this emergence of IoT devices. I think the latest statistic is every day 5.5 million devices come online, right? There's gonna be 50 billion devices by 2025 or 2020. Astronomical numbers and all those devices are little machines that can be compromised and used in a massive, large-scale attack. A lot of people don't know, I was at the White House at the time, but in late October, before the 2016 US presidential election, the internet went down three times. It was late October. It was about 10 days before the election. The internet went down as the public knows it, right? Anybody who's skilled in the industry knows that the internet didn't go down, just major service was compromised at a single technology company. DNS had gone down, right? It was exploited. So I'm at the White House, and as far as the world knows, or the US government knows, in general public knows, the internet's down. So I get the phone call, what's going on?  All we know is that DNS on the internet in the United States, large regions of the United States is down. And you're talking major websites, Twitter, Amazon, some of you may recall as I tell the story. So I didn't know what was going on. I do know that myself and probably a thousand other of my colleagues throughout the US government were working very hard and were laser focused in our preparedness and response efforts leading into the 2016 presidential election, laser focused. And now the internet's out 10 days before the election, we didn't know what was going on. So it happened once, we didn't know. Comes back online, everything's fine for a few hours, it happens again. So now we're starting to get nervous. Now the West Wing at the White House is saying we want hourly updates, what is going on? Still nobody knows throughout the US government. To make matters worse, the New York Times publishes a breaking news alert. Russia is testing their capabilities to knock out the internet on election day. Now listen carefully to what I just said, testing their capabilities to knock out the internet on election day. That right there was one of the many fears that we were concerned with on election day. In our preparedness and response efforts, we were focused on the availability of US citizens to go to polling stations and vote, cast their ballot, tally those ballots and then report those results to the network, to the networks. So when you went home at the end of the day, you could watch election night results come in in real time. That was a major concern because the internet is heavily used for the reportability of election night results. So we were extremely concerned and as everyone knows in computer security, if you're really good, you're not gonna do it just once.  So we were really concerned. We were significantly concerned. Fortunately, the FBI was on the case and working very hard. The FBI tracked it to a major technology company in New England and they dispatched local field agents to the organization within a few hours and those agents worked with the technology company who immediately threw their hands in the air and said, we know we can't stop it. Come to find out there was a vulnerability in their infrastructure that had been exploited and it was indeed knocking out DNS for large swaths of companies that relied on this organization effectively appearing that the internet was down. The internet was not down as we all know. So the FBI worked with the company, with the Department of Homeland Security, with others in the intelligence community to fix this vulnerability and to prevent it from happening again. So of course, the FBI immediately launched an investigation and wouldn't you know that that vulnerability was exploited by the Mirai Botnet? Or I'll familiar with the Mirai Botnet, it leveraged IoT devices. So if you have a DVR at home or an IP camera or smart TV, you may have been involved in this large-scale attack 10 days before the U.S. presidential election that was briefed to the President of the United States every hour on the hour, okay? What many don't know is that the way this attack was facilitated was because there were two, I believe the FBI has made an announcement on this but this vulnerability was exploited by the Mirai Botnet at the hands of two teenage kids who didn't realize what they had done. They had downloaded this code and executed it and they didn't realize what they were doing until after the FBI had investigated and knocked on their door. So I guess my point is, it's a long way of telling is a long story and a long way of answering my fear is the emergence of IoT devices coming online every single day and the lack of security baked into those devices and the lack of appreciation by organizations to really fully appreciate their effects. Okay, with that we will open it up to the audience for questions. And please do come up to the mic so that we can hear you well. Hi, I just had a question. Is there an incentive for any political group in the government right now to turn away the help from a foreign government that's trying to influence in their direction? Aside from being the ethical thing to do is to turn away that. But is there any incentive for them not to accept that? Incentive for? For to try to stop the influence campaigns that are benefiting them to stay in power. I mean, of course there's constantly intelligence, counterintelligence operations that are taking place every single day in the government and any sorts of foreign influence operations are being watched very closely. To try to stop it if it's helping them stay in power. Is there sanction? Is there sanction? I mean, I'm not the authority on this. I can just say from my experience in the US government there are protocols in place and how to respond to any sort of approach or influence that may take place. I actually have two questions. So you said you were worried about IoT but as everything moved into the cloud do you think there are more security and privacy concern in that sense for your client? Yeah, so the cloud is a great question. It's another great example of just the migration of data. What the cloud does is it opens up the attack surface. You have the availability of this infrastructure 24-7. I do think there's this misunderstanding with organizations that think they take their data and they migrated to a cloud-based infrastructure and then they no longer have a responsibility for that. Of course, that's not the case and organizations should think about it with respect to third-party risk, right? Just because you put it in a cloud infrastructure doesn't mean that you don't have a responsibility to protect that data, whatever it may be. That data could be personal consumer data of your clients. It could be the operations of your operations themselves. I mean, so there is that responsibility that doesn't go away. But then do you see it surpass IoT like cloud security or privacy? No, I don't see it surpassing IoT and this is just my opinion. I see IoT as the greatest threat just because it's just so many devices coming online every single day. So I would see it as also a security concern but something that can most definitely be managed. I see. And then the next one is, because you mentioned about 2016 presidential election, can you elaborate on what are some of the steps you guys take for protecting voters' privacy? Because you mentioned fraud is the focus and threat but what about privacy? Privacy of... Like voters' privacy. Voters, yeah. I mean, that's a really interesting question because the reason why it's so interesting is because of course as we all know or may know, elections are run by the states, by the states themselves. So the states have ultimate authority over how they run their elections. And of course, when I was in the government and we were laser focused on this topic, at no point did we wish to interfere with that. What we wanted to do was just inform the states with the threat, right? Cyber security is about risk management. If you don't know the risks, you can't protect against them, right? You don't know what you don't know. And so what we did was we went on a massive campaign to educate states and county officials about the risks. Now, do I still think it's important, back to your question about protecting user information? Absolutely. And I think states, based on my conversations, not only as a government employee, but then also as a private citizen in private practice, I've spent the last two and a half years meeting with dozens and dozens of state election officials. They are very focused on this topic and working very hard to protect their infrastructure and their user data. The only thing I would say, and this is really for citizens to understand and appreciate, and if anyone's gonna change it, it's gonna be the American people, is that a lot of this voter information is publicly available. For a small fee, you can go to City Hall and buy it. So it's just something to consider. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Hi, are people in your position whose job it is to kind of defend America's networks, empowered legally and technologically to do that job? And if not, what are your top one or two wish list items for what you need to do a better job? So, can we back up a little bit on your question? People in my position empower to protect America's networks.  Absolutely. I wouldn't lie. I would love to have more technical staff. And I think there are many in my position that would love to meet and hire more technical people. But like I said earlier, that's a challenge that private industry and the public sector is facing right now. I do think in my current capacity, I absolutely have the resources I need. I know that I can work with private organizations to help them defend their networks. I also know that I can pick up the phone and call not only the United States government, but foreign governments and request assistance and we'll get it and have done so over the last two and a half years. I would say that that is a product of me having been on the government side and knowing that there are a lot of willing and able people in government and in private practice who wanna help, right? We all wanna do the right thing, right? They want to help and it's just a matter of knowing that you can reach out and call them and you will get that help. That's why, again, back to probably 25 minutes ago when I said this sabbatical program, this exchange between public and private sector would be extremely beneficial because I think if we did it officially, there'd be a lot of people in the government who could go out to private practice experience, exactly as you said, defending networks and helping organizations defend against threats from the private practice perspective which is totally different than serving as a government employee and of course vice versa. So speaking of your time back with the FBI, you said you coordinated some of the response efforts when nation states or others were attacking U.S. infrastructure, right? So given some of the new policies about defend forward and preemptive defense type stuff coming out of Department of Defense, since this is an ethics conversation, how do you feel about how that direction is going? It's no longer about just defending and protecting, it's, well, we need to take the first step to defend ourselves. That's a great question. I'm glad you asked it. And I've actually gone on the record on this. I've published some thought leadership and actually I think it can be extremely risky. And I think the U.S. government needs to, in my opinion, I think the U.S. government needs to slow down and think long and hard about this topic because what happened at Sony is a great example, okay? The North Korea felt threatened by the United States and they attacked a private organization, okay? Sony didn't get any restitution or any support from North Korea, right? They couldn't sue them. Yes, there were sanctions and those sanctions are being felt, trust me. But Sony is a private organization. So I just think it's very risky. I think there needs to be a lot of thought put to it and I think rather than be forward-leaning and offense first, there should be some very serious confidence-building measure discussions taking place, some normalization of standards of behavior because I think that will be extremely beneficial in building trust and confidence between nations. And we need to be careful because if we do take an offensive approach first, we need to be prepared if our adversaries strike back, are we prepared? And I don't know if we've really thought about that. Just to follow up on that. How do we not get into the problem we have now with nuclear weapons where we're just this mutually assured discussion of all of our technology, right? I mean, that's exactly the thought leadership I published on this to actually compare to what we're going through right now in the cyberspace to the Cuban Missile Crisis. We need to de-escalate, slow down, confidence-building measures, establish this mutual trust, these rules of the road, what is on limits, off limits and have those discussions. I would say it's disappointing that the entire unit at the State Department was dissolved. It's disappointing that there haven't been significant investments in this space in the US government, particularly in the administration, but I haven't been there in two and a half years and there could be other things going on behind the scenes. So I just want to be clear that I'm not really informed with respect to that other than what you all are seeing in the news as well. But at four o'clock, the person who, in theory, knows what's going on is going to be here, so I encourage everyone to stick around for four o'clock and ask Josh Steinman. Oh, yes, that is exactly the person you want to talk to. Other questions? No other questions, Thomas? I'll give you one more. All right, ask one, really? Sure. All right, so I'll give you an example. You and I had known each other about 10 years now. I knew you were an agent. He actually, when he started the ICCS conference with Fordham, he was building out that whole program, which was actually great for the students. So, from your time in the bureau to going to FTI, all the social media disinformation campaigns, have you ever seen it happen, not towards government but on companies using the same types of bots and technologies? Yes, yeah. I would definitely say that the internet introduces a whole new level of a whole new ability to affect information much larger scope and scales than we ever even imagined. What happened leading into the 2016 US presidential election was not new. That's not a new technique. A misinformation campaign is not new. What was new that we experienced in the government was at that scope and scale and had those sort of effects. Okay? That was truly the weaponization of information. That's really what it was. And unfortunately, it had effects. Those effects are extremely hard to prove, right? Because you're talking about people who maybe were presented with information and then it changed the way they were thinking. So it's really hard to prove, but it definitely was taking place. And the fact that it was happening at such a large scope and scale was a new level. So now in private practice, having experienced that firsthand and witnessing that, I now know what it looks like and I'm seeing it now in private practice, unfortunately. Right? One of the things, one of the lessons learned from the 2016 US presidential election and the preparedness and response efforts, and people ask me all the time, what are some of the lessons learned? I say it's that it happened and it can be done again and now it can be repeated and now it's not gonna be just Russia. It's gonna be Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, other adversaries that know it can be done. The playbook has been written. There have been some successes. So now others may be motivated to do it. That's of course in the nation-state world. The other reality is that private organizations have seen that it can be done. And now there, I've seen it firsthand, some of the same techniques are being deployed against private companies, against their competitors. So it's a real threat, weaponizing of information. I talk about IoT, we talked about the cloud infrastructure and the risks there. I would also say another very serious threat on the horizon is the weaponization of information. Theft of information, releasing it, unauthorized disclosure, deep fakes, just taking real information and either manipulating it or just releasing it. It can be damaging enough. I talk to my clients all the time and they say, well, that's why we pick up the phone and have telephone conversations. And I said, well, bad news. You're using voice over IP. It rides on the same backbone that your email rides on. And the facial expressions of my clients change because they don't realize that. So now we have to go back to just pulling someone aside and having an in-person conversation. It's definitely something to consider. Good question. Well, I've seen it because you already know what I've done with Fox about Fox. So I've seen where people are using it for penny stock manipulation, misinformation and companies when they're trying to play them. So post it on bullet boards, all this bad information, watch the stock go down, do a buy, and there's nothing really you can do about it. It's hard to prove. Unfortunately, the only thing you can do is dox the eye and push it when you find out the real information you're doing. You know, going back to the question earlier about just the escalation and offense first, it's something to consider, especially if you're gonna stick around and continue this discussion is, I don't think you'd be wrong to ask our government officials, okay, if that's the policy that you wanna take, that's the policy position you wanna take, what happens when adversaries respond and it affects private companies, right? What happens if a major electrical company is shut down and electricity is out in an entire state and for days or weeks, right? And people say, wow, that's scary, you know, that's never happened. I say, actually it has happened twice. It's happened in Ukraine twice, right? Three days before Christmas, it was cold.  There was actually videos where the operator's screens, their mouse was moving and they weren't touching it. They took out their phones and recorded it. So my point is, is that if you're gonna continue down this road and it's a really good question because I think there needs to be given some considerable thought to exactly that, what happens if our adversaries respond and they compromise or take down private sector organizations? Will they receive any support from the government, right? And I don't mean the free assessments from the Department of Homeland Security. You know, I mean some significant support, right? MERSC is a great example. They fell victim to Pechen on Pecha. And I think the latest public statistics were, you know, they've invested over $300 million, right? If that happens here in the United States, will organizations get any support? So it's just something to consider and I think it's a great question and I think it deserves some more poking. The United Commission for Six Months. So you're losing out on things like needles when you need insulin, all that other type of stuff that the small little things you don't think about. And on that insulin-related note, it's the perfect note to close on because our next talk will be with the FDA. But I want to thank Anthony Ferrante very much for a fascinating hour with us and encourage all of you to take a sticker on your way out to thank you for joining us. Thank you.