U.S. Institute of Peace was founded by Congress in 1984, dedicated to the proposition that peace is a very practical undertaking, that it's indeed possible and it's essential for our national and international security. So we work with partners around the world in hotspots seeking to apply the best research, strategies and practices for preventing and resolving violent conflict around the globe. We were founded originally with very strong bipartisan support from Congress, so we recognize the importance of members of Congress working together to address critical challenges for American security, and in that spirit we inaugurated this series. We are very pleased to be joined this morning by Congressman Steve Pierce from New Mexico and Congressman Jim Himes from Connecticut for this second event to discuss how the U.S. can prevent illicit funding of terrorism, especially in this critical moment of technological disruption. We are seeing how technologies present enormous opportunities around the world, and in fact several years ago, USIP created a sister organization called Peace Tech Lab, which is using media, technology and data to accelerate and scale technical solutions for peace building. But we also know that there's substantial risk for exploitation of these technologies by terrorists, criminals, traffickers and others. So we've long looked at economic sanctions as a tool to rein in illicit activities, but we're seeing that non-state actors in particular terrorist groups like ISIS, Boko Haram and others are using new technologies and new tactics to fund their operations and evade any law enforcement. So policymakers have a real challenge. They have the challenge of creating a new mechanism to stem the tide of money to extremist groups and a growing urgency to do so. We are very grateful that Congress has identified this as an issue to address. And our featured guests today are at the forefront of those efforts through their work on the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Terrorism and Illicit Finance. And it's a new subcommittee. It was started just last year and it's chaired by Congressman Pierce. And I look very much forward to a conversation today about a lot of issues that probably not enough of us are well-versed in understanding. I invite all of you to follow USIP on Twitter and join today's conversation with the hashtag USIP Bipartisan. I also want to encourage you to listen to our new podcast. It's at usip.org backslash podcast. And that will include this event and many other events so that you can listen to it later. I also want to give a special shout out to those from Greenwich High School and Fairfield University who are joining us from Congressman Himes District. And welcome to all of you who are joining us by a live stream. And with that please join me in welcoming to the stage Congressman Steve Pierce and Congressman Jim Himes. Well I have intended to start posting this Fortinet Threat Map so I would ask you some time to look it up. It's a real time look at the hacks that are flying back and forth, the attempts to penetrate systems and it goes on 24 hours a day. So I call it up in Fortinet Threat Map and you should get that before I drop it or throw it away. So thank you very much. The things that are really basic to peace are quite simple. You need food, you need a place to stay and you've got to be able to breathe. But beyond that the human needs are, they become sort of, well they're just not the basic needs. And what we're experiencing right now is a threat to the very social structure of the world and most people don't care about their political systems. They don't care about the parties, they don't care about anything. They just want to feed their families, send them to school safely and that's good. But when you consider that the store of value is, it used to be gold, maybe silver or whatever and that was very cumbersome so we replaced it with paper money and then we replaced it with promises to pay and then we took away the gold standard and so if you look at the cyber currencies they're just another promise to pay. But what they are is they're linked through blockchains and you can see what's been done but you can't see who did it. Governments tax based on what you did and they know you did it. So if you really want to dig down to the deepest level of the threat of the currencies Bitcoin or whatever they are and they're developing very rapidly and Bitcoin is not nearly the most sophisticated or best now, just as the one with the most name ID, then how are countries going to tax if we don't know who's doing what and to whom? But if you take a look at ISIS, you look at the real threat of terrorism, ISIS was one of the most, it is the richest terror organization in human history. They got that way primarily through four or five main avenues, oil sales to about a billion dollars a year in oil sales, then architectural antiques, they're jackhammering things out that have survived all through human history and selling them on the internet. Then kidnapping is something that's very valuable. The extortion that goes on, in other words they take over regions, go to the banks and simply say we're going to take the accounts over and we're going to manage those accounts and we'll take some percent all or a piece or whatever and they're very successful with that. I first got engaged in the whole idea of terror financing when I went to talk to the group who is responsible for identifying and stopping terrorist financing and said at least stop the oil sales. Well that's very complex and I said no I'm from the oil country, that was my business, not very complex at all. Every barrel of oil either goes through a pipeline but most of the places don't have pipelines and so it's going through a truck, it's being carried from a well to there. You don't have to cause environmental degradation, you simply stop that little four inch pipe that runs from the well to the tank battery and from the tank battery to the truck. It's the loading that you can stop very easy, you don't have to blow up the trucks, you don't have to blow up the wells, you don't have to blow up the tank batteries and that just seemed too complex for the system to understand so we allowed a billion dollars worth of oil to be moved to market and understand the nature of the moving. The trucks would sit in line for months to get one load of oil, months to get to the front of the line and we couldn't find a way to disrupt that but the more immediate concerns the systems are now being attacked in huge ways so in Kiev there was a hack of the system that just suddenly caused ATMs to start spitting out cash and so ATMs had to be shut down so I mean you and I used this for convenience but our convenience is being used against us. You can take a look at Bangladesh, everyone knows that they lost 81 million dollars, what's not as well known is the SWIFT system is what moves financing back and forth across the world, 25 million transactions a day and everybody used it if you're going to transfer from one country to the next or sometimes from one bank to the next in a country use the SWIFT system and they penetrated the SWIFT system and told the New York Fed to transfer money. Luckily they misspelled the word foundation or it would have been a billion dollars instead of 81 million because all of them had misspelled the word except those four transactions that actually occurred for the same thing is happening around the world that Fortinet threat map will show to you the attacks on the system so you have basically and I'll wrap up with this but you got basically three or four major reasons that people get into the hacking system one is just people love to disrupt systems they like to see if they can outsmart the system we experience that quite a bit in our in our DOD then what can we do there to disrupt you get criminals they make a lot of money and there's almost no consequence so we're pretty sure who who accomplished 81 million highs from Bangladesh but there's no consequence for it and almost none worldwide for any of these so you have a tremendous opportunity for gain and almost no risk so you get high reward no risk you're going to invite a lot of players who get better and better and they change by the moment and their process has changed by the moment so when we're defending now that's what happened two days ago in the threats now are much more advanced and so that constant chasing you also have people who wanted they want the disruption the system they want the system to collapse and to fail and and those are the ones that we really should worry about then you've got just like in my hometown we have an oil and gas economy and so you have cartels bringing cash in and buying trucks they never really move anywhere but they funnel a lot of money so a lot of money laundering goes on through legitimate businesses but what they're doing is undermining the basis of finance and the operation of businesses in in America because of our lax position on beneficial ownership America has become a haven and maybe the haven for corporate misdeeds around the world so again you just as far as you want to go the system is being compromised and so I appreciate mr. Himes being here with me today this this committee is very bipartisan way we just there's almost no room for partisan comments here as I took over you you can hear the breadth of issues we dealt with and so I took every member and paired them with the Republican and Democrat and you all have a column and so if you visualize the whole area of cyber crime and terrorism illicit finance you we've got probably 50 different categories and we picked out 15 of the most important and we put individuals and you all you too go and plumb the depths of that one issue and so we've been able to ramp up the the knowledge in in Congress pretty quickly but it's by it's bipartisan effort and people like mr. Himes have made that bipartisan effort work so I'm proud to be here with you all today proud to be on the stage with him so thank you very much for hosting this Nancy thanks thank you well good morning everybody and thank you Nancy into the Institute of Peace for having this conversation very very important topic thank you Steve for doing this we were chuckling in the green room it's not easy to find topics it really truly are bipartisan but this is one of them and there's little bonuses I heard Steve say that the necessities of life are housing food and clean air so I'm taking that as an endorsement of HUD food stamps in the EPA thank you we'll keep that in this room though I want to want Steve back next next Congress anyway I really appreciate the topic it's I'm a former banker I now sit on this subcommittee of financial services committee and I actually act as ranking member of the NSA and cyber security subcommittee of the intelligence committee so I spent a lot of time thinking about this and in my three or four minutes let me just say I am both a technology optimist but also an optimist around our ability to ultimately make sure that the tool cryptocurrencies networks in general the internet is on balance a force for good and that when as soon as you go to cryptocurrencies in the in that the anonymity that cryptocurrencies offer and that congressman Pierce talked about you spin out the scenarios of of course drug dealers and child molesters and terrorists being able to move value anonymously and yes that's a problem and we've seen that to be a problem but there are things that we can and must do and by the way I'm not sure necessarily that we need to start with overall macro framing that is pessimistic I mean again if you talk to people at FBI CIA NSA and said 50 years ago there will come a moment where no human being on the planet will do anything and not leave a record of that either on Facebook or at an ATM or under a surveillance camera those guys would have gotten pretty excited 50 years ago and that by the way offer some really potent challenges to the concept of privacy and how we think about that and who gets access to what information which is well beyond the scope of this conversation but my point is that when more and more stuff happens on breakable observable networks that's a heck of a tool for both law enforcement the intelligence community again raising all kinds of issues but there's a couple of things that I do think we we can and need to do number one make sure that our political leadership is is educated on this stuff when I came to Congress nine years ago not only members of Congress but quite frankly senior flag officers and others had no idea what was going on in the cybersecurity realm didn't really understand the problem generally and we hadn't invested a lot of time and energy and money and in countering that that has changed pretty dramatically in the last nine years but also in the specific realm of cryptocurrencies and how they might be used for ill a couple of thoughts we can talk more about but in addition to making sure that we understand the problem obviously we've got to arm our Fincens of the world with the tools to regulate the pieces of this stuff that are the pieces of these things that are regulatable so strong encryption is a huge problem there is encryption out there that cannot be broken by anybody and that is a problem but of course around any kind of strong encryption whether it's cryptocurrencies or or something like WhatsApp there is a person typing something into a device in the case of a cryptocurrency at some point there is a tangible good being purchased or moved there are lots of opportunities around that problem of strong encryption to get at and to learn information about the people who are who are using those things for with malign intent and so I think like so many policy questions this doesn't have a silver bullet easily satisfying answer but making sure that our regulatory agencies are keeping a close eye on those elements that they're capable keep capable of keeping a close eye on acknowledging that some things are just out there and this gets back to educating policymakers there's still a lot of people on the hill who believe that we could do away with strong strongly encrypted communications and that's an old way of thinking right I mean an encrypted communication is very simply a piece of software that can reside anywhere it can reside offshore and people can get to it using using networks and this all came up in the whole discussion of Apple and San Bernardino and the terrorists iPhone a lot of those issues were surfaced for the first time in both the popular imagination and amongst my colleagues but making sure that we have our regulatory agencies really facing the 21st century rather than the 19th century and then and I say this is more with my hipsy hat on than financial services but the good news is is that here in the United States and in the West the UK NATO we're as good as it gets in terms of thinking about the threats to and the tools to be used against those who create a threat to cyber security so I would never take the bet that this thing that looks scary to us now is the strong encryption that is at the core of of cryptocurrencies that it will be different from any other technology that anyone in this room has ever experienced which is to say 20 years from now maybe 10 years from now maybe five years from now we'll look back on it and say guess that's it's antiquated what an obsolete piece of what an obsolete piece of technology and that's why I think it's important for people who do things behind closed doors in places like Fort Meade or across the river in that direction to make sure that they are leading the way in understanding the technology and making sure that we can get as much insight into what bad players are doing and I know that sounds a little scary on the privacy front but even if you think that we shouldn't be working to do things like de-encrypt strong encryption I promise you that the Russians the Iranians and the North Koreans are doing it and if nothing else we need to make sure that we stay out in front of our potential adversaries in in having the capability to to try to keep some order and what could otherwise be a disorderly realm so let me stop there and say thank you again to Nancy and the Institute of Peace and the Congressman Pierce for the conversation. Thank you both and before we plunge into what is both a complicated and sobering topic I want to start by just asking both of you it's in this era of increasing partisanship how did you come to the bipartisanship of this committee you mentioned a little bit that we didn't have room for it but that's not always good enough in and of itself so tell us a little bit about how that's worked for you and what you've been able to accomplish with with that spirit. For me it's it's quite easy I represent a district that's 34 percent Republican I mean so see better be bipartisan you don't get elected I have to I have to have almost half of the Democrats vote for me to be elected and so it begins right there and and frankly I had an offer from some of my Democrat friends in the state legislature during the last redistricting hey we can give you 10 percent more Republicans I said why would you do that well you know you have to work so hard and they don't vote for you I said I'm gonna get elected I think we should have to work this hard so for me the most powerful thing we could do is take care of the the whole jury-mandering thing both sides do it by the way but if you represent an 85 percent Democrat County or 85 percent Republican County and you are that registration you can say almost anything and saying almost anything then heightens the tensions it heightens the rhetoric I find myself almost never using the words Democrat Republican because it's you begin to categorize people I talk about my values a lot either like my values and vote for me you don't and vote against me but that's the beginning point for me. I completely agree and you've got two rarities here I have also a purplish district my my predecessors back with a couple of little exceptions we're Republicans I'm a Democrat and so there's a whole other lesson in that about what congressional district should look like whether there should be safe seats what what it means to have a safe seat and who you pay attention to so I completely agree with what Congressman Pierce said what I would add to this though is there's something that is particularly interesting about this issue broadly cryptocurrencies number one a lot of people don't understand it that probably helps number two anything that falls into the realm of national security and keeping Americans safe starts out not being terribly partisan look we'll fight over how much money should be spent on the Pentagon and the CIA and everything else so they'll have to take on a little bit of a partisan gene but not much when it comes to keeping people safe traditionally whether it's armed services or intelligence these things have these things have started out in a strong bipartisan fashion and lastly I would point out any issue that touches on privacy and networks the forces are almost a lot less well they are a lot less partisan than they are somewhere on a spectrum of libertarianism so in other words when I said what I just said up there about making sure that you know people in behind closed doors at NSA are really doing their research to be able to penetrate networks that would enrage the libertarians on both the left and the right and that's why I'm careful to say with all due protection of privacy but my point is that there's less attention between right and left and more attention between folks who are you know more national security types and folks that are more about you know intense civil liberties and privacy that's that's where the tension often is in these issues and what Jim was saying there the spectrum is usually left to right and we find ourselves falling somewhere on the spectrum but in certain issues it becomes circular so the left and the right meet together and those are very difficult issues but but the privacy issues probably right there right now I'm wrestling we want to reform the Bank Secrecy Act hasn't been touched since the 70s it's way behind time things are the threats are moving much faster than the bureaucracy in the greatest fight on beneficial ownership is coming from my my libertarian leaning guys and they would join up with with the the left on this issue and so it's it's just a bare-knuckle fight to try to get something done that threads this point that Jim's bringing up well it's interesting because this is a new subcommittee your subcommittee on terrorism and illicit finance and you are really on what is the new frontier of crime it seems both you know for us and internationally how do you think of this in terms of the balance between policy solutions technology advances and what you see this subcommittee able to do as you grapple with these issues well the first thing we did is get the focus on on the oil sales stop the easy stuff first that's easy compared to the to the hacking then trying to get with the national the international auction houses to to begin to identify those those people who traffic in in the archaeological antiques I mean we're seeing the structure of entire cultures that have survived for thousands of years and and so so just doing those things that we can and then trying to get harmony among the nations the U.S. is actually it's not very we're not at the front cutting edge of the cyber security we were actually back in the pack somewhere so talking to those countries that have handled it very effectively in Israel those countries Israel would probably be high Australia I think is good the tie line has had to wrestle with problems in it so it's those that have wrestled with it internally rather than waiting for somebody to come save them one other thing I would add to that is on the broader topic of illicit funding I point to a solution that I actually think is a solution to a lot of problems and sadly one that we are wandering away from or rushing away from which is continuing to stand up as a leader globally for a functioning international system of cooperating nation-states who act responsibly again a whole other conversation around kind of the America first concept I understand where it comes from but you know all of these problems all of these problems get a lot easier if nation-states act responsibly including including this one you know okay so irresponsible nation-state you probably think I'm talking about Iran and North Korea yes I am in fact North Korea you know is using many of these tools as a sovereign actor in ways that you would expect rogues to use these tools but I'm also talking about you know Steve talked about about oil trucks those oil trucks wouldn't have been worth anything if they hadn't been able to cross the Turkish frontier and so to the extent that we can stand up and cajole and push and pull you know not just North Korea and Iran into a cooperative international system with a common sets of values but also some of our NATO allies not to mention the Russians and the Chinese the more we can stand for you know going quite frankly in the opposite direction I sort of feel like we're going internationally right now all of these problems get easier rather than harder I think that's an important point in terms of how those international networks and norms can can be a part of the solution we have been reading about what Venezuela has done in terms of issuing its crypto its own cryptocurrency as a means of evading some of the sanctions there's been an American policy response it you know it reads like some sort of old dusty spy novel with you know Venezuelan networks and shadowy Russian actors and you know how how how effective do you think our response to that will be in terms of addressing what the Venezuelans are trying to accomplish well our response has been pretty clear I mean the Treasury issued their their warning about investing in these things look I you know be surprised to hear this from a Democrat but you know look if you want to go invest in the Petro you got what's coming you know you know you here's a wildly irresponsible almost roguish regime that is coming up with an instrument they want to sell you right you know I mean again we have an we have an obligation to protect our to protect our citizens but look the whole that that to me is not that scary other than apparently a number of people are going to fall for it and there you are going to deliver a couple hundred million dollars to to a to a pretty corrupt to a pretty corrupt regime but to me that's a little bit of a side show the whole thing doesn't make much sense most people look at the stuff and understand it don't think it doesn't make much sense so I think it's quite likely to go away pretty quickly but it to me it's a side show to the larger issue of what North Korea is doing in the cyber realm and what ISIS and others can do if you look a little bit broader because I think Jim is exactly right it's it's one guy out of desperation trying to create debt or the finance debt and that's what our sanctions were trying to stop but you can you can easily look at the value that accelerated on Bitcoin and what it tens of thousand dollars just overnight per per share and realize that there is the world is very large and it's trillions of dollars and coming up with six billion which was the intent of Venezuela coming up with six billion is really not that hard and so step apart from Venezuela and consider the broader issue of rogue states or individuals who want to finance whatever and so you realize then that's the mechanism that terrorist organizations use to fund themselves they'll go to and they'll set up a go fund me account for some somebody who's experienced the loss of a home or a loss of a family member the severe accidents all made up but they're able to get tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of dollars and then you and you take a look nationwide and you look at the Bitcoin prices and realize people people will put money into a lot of things and in that potential aside from the question of Venezuela is still very destabilizing because when people don't have the belief when when the truth is unknown then they're going to retreat away from the systems the the magic that the wonder of the world economy today is is the fluid flow of money and right now one of the things that that is being targeted or is the very basic framework of the financial system so if we can target the trust in the financial system the movement of money those 46 trillion moves and in one of those structural systems here in the US and if you can just disrupt it a bit then you can freeze everything because people lose confidence even the people who who run the system if they lose confidence that that money is escaping out of it they have to shut it down a bank holiday and suddenly you have caused pandemonium to happen and it's all through systems like you're asking about here so addressing that issue and building on your comment congressman about the need for national cooperation there's an an international entity that has been formed specifically to address these issues I f some acronym yes some acronym is that effective is that making a difference does your subcommittee interact with it so again I would as imagine the threat map up here and we're going to be sitting down holding a three-day conference and the attacks are coming by the second and the tax are changing by the second they're upgrading when they find a cyber block they're going to find a way around the cyber block and that's the difficulty the systems have to be very very fast moving and that's not I'm not seeing that in the US systems and I'm not seeing it in the world systems and so yes it is effective but it's effective at beginning a conversation the other side is making billions without risk and so the stimulation for them to to create problems is is maybe greater than hours to solve the problems and that's that's what I see is is the difficulty in any of these in even within the US we are visiting at Vincent and so I began to hear it was hearing from the top people that that we really not in the job of enforcement I said why don't you change your name find after crimes enforcement network you know and so we had a discussion with the secretary of the Treasury when he was confirmed that I think we have a basic question to ask here what is their function and so Jim was right we were we are developing very sophisticated tools but engaging in the whole international community as it's difficult and it's even difficult for us to keep up so that's it's it's a very complex issue and then your question is right on point I would just quickly add to that quite apart from organizations I've been interested for a long time and we've been making very slow progress but we really need to prioritize creating the cyber equivalent of the Geneva Convention and I know state has worked on this IOP has worked on this but we we need to make this a high priority and again it's I understand why it's hard you know Chinese are doing things we want to retain the ability to do things in the cyber realm but you know again we have such we don't have a ton of common interest with Iran and North Korea but making sure we don't take down each other's electricity networks as one so for whatever reason is I guess it's gummed up in the UN Council of Experts or whatever's called but you know this really should be a high priority if we don't do it eventually we're going to get into a tit for tat and in fact you know I sort of felt we should have been more aggressive in demonstrating to the Russians what our cyber capabilities were after the hack and the fear of that of course is that it escalates and it may take that it may take you know Florida being without power for eight hours to pick on one state for us to understand that we should be putting at the very top of our list and effort to codify some norms it shouldn't be that hard to codify you know hospitals let's start with hospitals you're not taking hospitals offline and then expand the conversation from there sure and then to really take Jim's comments and move them further if you take a look our entire electrical grid is managed through computers our entire water supply is managed through a system of computers if you want to know how easily society can be disrupted think about those vulnerabilities and and that's when Jim is talking about Geneva Convention on this stuff because now you're undermining the very trust of civil government itself and if we want chaos in the world just walk away from from that and since Jim's confessing I might confess to here that so he's doing some stuff out in the Republican direction I'm sort of doing things out the other direction because if you look at the Equifax breach they actually were using the world's best program but they became a little sloppy and a little lazy and they didn't put in the latest fix the system knew it had a vulnerability and they just didn't install that they didn't hit the you know install button and so so they were then hacked and what a hundred million records lost or something like that and so so I sometimes think that that we need almost a utility like a utility that is available and and you simply pay a monthly fee and you don't have to keep up with all the installations that we have a protocol that would would underlie or overlie the the Israelis think of an umbrella that simply defends them from the attacks coming in the umbrella is to deflect and then each person's got their own level of security so I don't really have a strong opinion if it should be an undergirding protocol or that overarching protocol but I kind of think that that's that's where we're going to have to end up because right now they're attacking the big institutions if they really wanted to if the terrorists really wanted to make hey they'd set up the dollar store of the dollar store concept and they'd attack all the small banks because that's where the vulnerabilities are just take a couple million you don't have to get a billion at a time just take a few million here and there from all the thousands of small banks around and you realize how vulnerable the system is and then you do the whole marketing system it you can we're very vulnerable in modern society because we're very comfortable or very we have a lot of tools to make our lives easier just the ATMs and paying online all those things are points at which the hackers will find find you and us I want to open to the audience who I'm sure are feeling very reassured right now okay I told her I would sit between her and the window I don't have to just feel bad when she threw herself out you know so we have people coming with mics I'm going to take a few questions and let's start right here and then go to Nancy and then well thanks very much for your bipartisan support on this issue which is very important to many of us I've been working for the past four years formerly with the state department on illicit funding of terrorism and the anti-ISIS coalition and particularly I was working on the trafficking and illegal antiquities which I know you've been interested in we found that there's still some problems associated with both certain countries to which we can't get agreements like Yemen which is currently experiencing great instability and we can't have a bilateral MOU with a country that we don't have a relationship and we also have a problem with some countries that are not signatories to the UNESCO agreement of 1972 on the prohibit prohibition of antiquities so I guess I was hoping to ask whether whether you as members would be interested in first doing what you did for Iraq and Syria and passing a resolution providing emergency closure of our borders to illegally acquired antiquities from Yemen because it's a country at war civil war and or perhaps revisiting your implementing legislation for the 1972 UNESCO agreement since now it's very very old and perhaps unwieldy perhaps ceding to the secretary of the state the opportunity to put emergency restrictions in when countries fall apart so just a thought thank you let's take a couple so that we have time to hear voices so Nancy and then I'm scared very scared let me say that I've heard a lot of ideas from both of you how to handle this is the is there legislation that that embodies those ideas I understand that that without international players buying in it doesn't help that much but are there is there legislation are there talks going on with with our allies on these issues adding the Geneva protocol is very very interesting thank you and then pass it back to Rohini hi i'm Rohini Shri Hari from Peace Tech Lab so you know throughout the world we see all these incentives by governments to bring you know more people who are underprivileged into the digital economy through establishing digital identities and so on India had a huge program to do that kind of thing and the goal there is essentially you know people who don't even have a bank account allowing them to participate in the digital economy so this is the the good part of these kinds of technologies so it seems like there's two things happening simultaneously all of that stuff is happening where we're trying to bring all these people online with digital identities which protects them and so on but are you also now concerned that that's going to exacerbate these kind of issues yes you so let's let's handle that package of three go for it i just want to connect the last two i candidly i'm i think congressman pierce is a lot smarter on antiquities than i am but but it's i think it's really important to keep perspective here the blockchain and networks generally are going to do dramatic good in the world i mean just the ability to identify you i've read about some of the benefits programs that are getting out into the hinterlands of india the ability to identify an individual in some remote part of india and make sure the benefits get to that it's remarkable it's really amazing and i don't know nancy that that that really scared is is the right answer there i i'm exactly the generation when i was in grade school where every single day i went to school with some meaningful possibility that we were going to have global nuclear war and you know there were going to be 250 hydrogen bombs in the united states and we were going to be a crater i look this stuff is cake in comparison to what i grew up in an elementary school which doesn't mean that we don't take it seriously but you know again the the the threats here um are are i would argue not as intense as they were in the 50s in the 60s and also addressable in the sense that there are there are constraints uh north korea iran china has some pretty scary capabilities about what they might do to us in the cyber realm but they also understand in a classic deterrence framework that we are probably better at that that stuff than they are and so they are deterred so we go to where we do in so many of these conversations about weapons of mass destruction nuclear weapons which is what you really start to worry about are non-deterrable entities non-state actors rogue actors and yes um you know i again probably spend a lot more time worrying about a rogue actor getting a nuclear weapon and that there's five programmers acting as rogues because again i you know a nuclear weapon going off in manhattan because there's a rogue actress who somehow secured one to me i think has ripples much more dramatic than you know somebody manages to close down uh you know jp morgan for a day or so which would be pretty catastrophic in and of itself so anyway that's a long advertisement for making sure we keep perspective around the dramatic good that these network and encryption devices can do and also that um you know there are levers that we have and constraints that exist that shouldn't have any of us sort of dwelling on the apocalyptic scenario too too much do you want to comment on the antiquities and yes um obviously be unrested in it but i'll also tell you how to work very closely with the state department and and sometimes they have sensitive negotiations going on that maybe have been ongoing for years and so you get throughout a resolution in congress you simply take it back to square one so so i'm always a little bit nervous in congress getting too involved but but i'm interested in stopping the trade first of all legislation um you're just not going to be able to keep bills and laws moving as fast as the system's moving so we really need strong oversight from congress of the institutions that are trusted so fence and has tremendous mobility and in the ability to act and and to use international actors but we in congress can't can't step aside from it because the the american people only get to touch it through us and so that that oversight capability is is really remarkably important and both parties tend to sort of step away from the oversight responsibility in my opinion watching for 14 years so that's the flaw and then obviously the two systems you know getting people into the digital ages also exposing us the more people are connected the more one connection can take it i agree with jim i i want to point out the difficulties because people three years ago four years ago we were talking about should we really have uh cyber cyber protection should that be something that the u.s is really that interested in and so and so you can imagine that yes i want people to understand exactly what the risks are that we're facing but i would agree with with jim that we've always faced risk we're just going to have to be a lot more mobile and agile on this because the the threats come from so many different sources so we'll do another round of questions but i'm going to start it off uh with a question we got um from our live feed from a 12th grader at Greenwich High School uh renais lepont jamison thank you for watching who asks how does the federal government determine which terrorist groups are the largest threats to the u.s and address them or counter their work in illicit funding do you want to take that one for renais thanks renais senior i hope you register to vote i'm not going to tell you who to vote for just register to vote but thank you for the question so um how do we determine who the biggest threats are that's a the united states government maintains a formal list of designated terrorists and that's a calculation that is made on on a whole series of criteria that that result in in in this list and it's a list of people who are interested in attacking us attacking our allies and then our national security apparatus really does a lot of thinking research and surveillance to determine where the threats lie and so a very small group operating in a remote corner of pick a country pakistan without a lot of international connections without a lot of resources without a lot of talent is going to attract a lot less focus and attention than a than a global group like just to use an example isis or al-qaeda which is shown an ability to build networks around the world to bring in people from all over the place and to recruit people in the west and elsewhere as well as to set up businesses like antiquities and oil and even you know do things like explore the use of cryptocurrency so a lot of your taxpayer dollars go to pay for the people who day in and day out are paid to really analyze where the threats lie and then think about how we best how we best deal that and all of our responsibility you get into realms here that american citizens need to develop strong opinions on our national security apparatus always bumps up against the nature the intensity of surveillance we had this steve's exactly right on the 702 surveillance program this is capturing this is capturing internet communications abroad that sometimes pick up us person information the parties were really split on you know how powerful should the u.s. government be to suck in communications that may include your email if you were corresponding with a non-us person that that's the responsibility of all of us to develop a strong opinion balancing the need for security against the the demands of civil liberties and i would add to that the the ability to destabilize affecting stability i'm i'm not so interested in in the former government democracy republic or whatever we can exist but stability to me is the key we can exist coexist with people who view governmental systems much different than we do but stability if they're exporting instability then i would take them very seriously but then like jim says they got to be able to finance it and that's reason isis was so dangerous they were the most elaborately funded terror organization in human history and we should be paying attention to that so we'll take two quick questions right here in the blue jacket and if there's one more yeah go ahead hi my name is lex i'm an intern at the state department i have a question about what congress is doing you guys mentioned bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and that can be traced as well as hacks can be traced back to the hacker but what is congress doing specifically to counter terrorism funding that can't be traced for instance with the hawala system okay the hawala and then right here if you could do a quick one hello justin marinelli um similar congressman you mentioned that part of the problem with cryptocurrency is tracking transactions so not knowing what to tax essentially but isn't that similar to the problem we have with cash transactions cash transactions now you trust the waitress made 83 in tips instead of 97 for example doesn't that mean that at a certain point we just have to say we trust people are mostly honest and we'll do the best we can to get any more if we can yeah i starting on the last question first i i think given the scale of of the cryptocurrencies uh and their ability to be completely invisible cash is not completely invisible in other words it's a it's an established system that that is trackable and and has an entry point an exit point cryptocurrencies don't currencies don't have that then on your first question of all we're trying to do on the cryptocurrencies is be aware because there's not too much that congress can do right now the hawala system is many of the people who use it it's legitimate that's where you've got a representative in this country and you want to ship money over there so you have a representative over there talk to the representative here somebody pays here the email and the payments made down there with the the fee taken out and so that's a a legitimate legitimate form of commerce except it can be easily easily misused and so finding that that misuse point is is extraordinarily difficult um any comments on that um digital wallets uh i'm often tempted to answer the question what is congress doing on any problem with not much um uh look it is a it's a it's a somewhat dysfunctional body heading into an election right so this is just for all kinds of reasons we're going to be slow in our pace of doing what we will do slowly over time which is updating privacy laws updating the bank secrecy act doing all the stuff that congressman pierce mentioned earlier um but again let me tell me fall back on the technology uh we're spending a lot of money to understand um strong encryption um a lot of the anonymity if not all of the anonymity relies on strong encryption um the technologists in the room will know the breaking encryption is a function largely of computing power and you know around the world people are really looking hard at uh quantum computation and other technological ways of addressing it so my point is simply that don't there's no technology that we haven't looked backwards 20 years or 10 years or five years or one years later and say isn't that quaint and obsolete right and so that's going to happen here too um we just need to be at the forefront i don't ever want somebody to crack strong encryption that is not us um and because that means everything we do our military our nuclear cook man in control becomes observable to somebody who cracks strong encryption so i want us at the forefront of that and then again if i can make the same plea i did uh to the young woman at granite high school um citizens of the country need to think hard about about what that means and what they want us to do about it if the government can crack strong encryption there is no theoretically theoretically privacy anywhere ever um and so what constraints do you want to put on that or how much do you want us to keep up with our ability to use uh tools like that congressman appears final comments yeah the i think jemma's really cast a very good theme here that that the last thing we should do is just retreat and try to take our money out of the bank put it on the the mattress it's uh that it will get to that point to where instability is is everywhere in front of us and if we will stay engaged if we're the ones driving the system then typically the u.s has as a more global view in my opinion doesn't matter which party typically we we look at things a little more globally and a little bit more for the human human benefit and that's that value system that comes from us as as a collective body and again it's not associated with any party any religion or anything it's just us as people that's probably the greatest gift that we can give to the world that that sense of purpose and in a sense that we're always going to be working toward the right we may not always be correct and we might not always act correctly but we generally do that Winston Churchill said americans always do the right thing after they've tried everything else we pretty well tried everything else congressman i want to thank both of you for joining us here today i want to thank you for your bipartisan spirit both today and on your subcommittee and i think all of us in particular want to thank you for you really tackling an issue that's on the frontier of technology and crime and privacy issues and a lot of the values that you've laid out for us today and we we're all counting on you to make sure that we collectively as a nation can navigate something that has the potential to undermine the the fundamentals of our system or to continue to take us forward so thank you both please join me in thanking the congressman


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The best night show of a competition is a competition that the SSA from Seven Group Special Forces implemented and invited to hold the 92 offense from the First Special Forces Command. The purpose of this competition is to show their soldiers' skills, their potential, as well as their logistical knowledge. The soldiers have to complete the following events. Army combat fitness test, they have to tap an essay based on leadership. There is a written test, forklift drive and evaluation, SSA inventory, obstacle course, quarter master history class. There is also a 12 mile road and four qualification range. Assemble or disassemble a 2-4 Ibrabo and 2-4-9 land navigation and logistical board. This competition helps soldiers to help and prepare for any professional military education schools as well as expand their logistical knowledge as they get ready for the competition. The soldier will be awarded with the title of the 92 Alpha of the Year as well as they will earn the Army Achievement Medal. I wanted to compete in the best night to Alpha to pretty much redeem my first time I did this competition. I was runner up but I feel like I needed to do it again to prove to myself that I can absolutely be the best. The hardest part of this competition was honestly being resilient through all the events. Everything is very strenuous, like it's a mental game, it's very physical. So basically able to get through those after doing something as hard as the 12 mile ruck being able to shoot a 40 out of 40 or for example during the weapons. Everything was just pretty much a mind game so just basically staying resilient throughout the whole competition would probably be the hardest thing. I learned a lot about myself, I learned what I can handle and pretty much what I can't which is not a lot because I don't like to say that I can't do something so I learned a lot of what I can do and how to overcome what might be too hard and I don't want to do necessarily. Other than that it's been fun, it's been good to compete with fellow 92 Alphas from the Joes to NCOs so I'm great.


Global internet penetration has increased by 10 times in the last 18 years. At the same time, as mentioned, the landscape of attacks has continued to grow. And it was estimated that in the last year, they cost about $600 billion. So this is a very important and yet hard problem to solve, because the amount of data that you can get from the network is enormous. So we always call it finding a needle in a haystack. And since the network behavior is highly dynamic, and the attacker is also coming up with new work from the tax, it's like finding a needle in a haystack can change its color and size. So one common way to do anomaly detection is to set load threshold. They say that if your load goes above certain threshold, it's probably an attack. But is this a satisfactory solution? It's very hard to set all these thresholds. And high load doesn't necessarily imply malicious traffic. So while this problem is very challenging, and the issues of having a lot of data is problematic, but it can actually be turned into an asset. If you can convert this data and use them as input to a machine learning algorithm. And the algorithm can hopefully provide you a lot more information about what is going on in your network. So in this NUS, Singtel cybersecurity lab, we have been looking at the large amount of data that Singtel has collected and tried to use it to solve our problem. So we have been looking at designing different techniques so that we can basically automate a organization's capability to do a lot of detections. So this is kind of a very simple flow chart of how usually you do on form of machine learning, which is called supervised learning. Usually you will assume that you have a large amount of ground proof or labored data. You know that these are attack traffic. And based on it, you fit it into your machine learning algorithm to learn. The issue is that you normally don't have that much labored data. What you can also do is do clustering. Basically, you look at features such as the day of the week, time of the day, and all the addresses, and try to figure out how you cluster them. And hopefully, you get nice data like this. But it doesn't happen all the time. Quite often, you get data that is very hard to cluster. And so now the question becomes, can you actually design algorithm that can detect unknown or even new attacks by processing a large amount of data in real time? So one of the approaches that we have been looking at is something called provisional autoencoder, or VAE for short. So VAE is an unsupervised deep learning techniques that doesn't require ground proof data for training. So what it does is it tries to learn the distribution of the dominant normal data. And based on that, it can get a sense of what is normal. So to make the discussion more concrete, I'll just show here some of the features that you can collect from different network, things like source, decision, network addresses, traffic, or application types, packet sizes, and timing. You can convert this into many possible variation and look at it differently and come with many features to look at. So how can VAE help you? So first, what VAE does is that it estimates the distribution of the normal traffic. And based on that, you can come out with a distance. And that distance will help you decide whether a certain set of data is a normal or not.  And due to processing limitation, usually you can only select a small subset of the features to use to fit into your machine learning algorithm. So what VAE can do is that instead of making the user select the right set of traffic, you actually can fit in a large, a much larger number of features to the machine learning algorithm. And then we should tell you what is the right features to use. So what can such a scheme play in a wider context? One thing that we have looked at is that can it generate fingerprints? That means by looking at the data, can the system give you a fingerprint of known data, the data that you have seen before? Once you have this, that makes detection and resolution much easier. Another thing that we would like to do is that, well, since we have fingerprints, and if you have stable fingerprints, then is it possible to find new attacks by identifying new fingerprints? And finding new attacks always very difficult. So if you can use it to finding new fingerprints, that is a feature that is really missing from existing techniques. So in conclusion, what I have presented is a way of how we can incorporate, incorporate, unsupervised deep learning techniques into an overall framework for network intrusion or detection. And of course, these techniques will have to be used in conjunction with many other techniques as well as human input. Thank you.


everybody had a great holidays and hey what's up master traders master nader trades hope everybody else did well today looks like Moderna gapped up again what a freaking beast move man holy smokes 370 merc came down very hard huge by the dip opportunity almost what's up rpnickles Clarks came back down Tesla up 4% today a lot of like odd moves across the board you know got like Microsoft up 2.2% yeah Moderna is pretty nice move I mean we talked though I talked a little bit about it over the weekend on the direction of it and where it was going and stuff I don't know if anybody had a chance to look I think I posted it pretty shy did it was um it was a pretty good trade if you're um if you're looking to like you know open a strangle or figure out which area to go so this was where I originally posted on over the weekend so saw a possible move to 390s or moved to 270s right because it was in the middle of the trend line it broke above the trend line it was gonna make that big move up if it rejected from the trend line it was gonna come back down so obviously we broke the above the trend line you know it's market extremely bullish on all this all this um vaccine companies and stuff so that's a pretty interesting move there um let me see did we hit 393 365 so we didn't quite hit 393 yet but that could be in the works so pretty close we broke over pretty strong um RSI is very very hot so it could potentially get some rejection here um hard to say but it's it's toward the end of the run weekly weekly is just the beginning of the reversal so that means you know it could potentially even come back to 450s wow car wow car there pretty interesting though could play both sides and you still get paid but you probably have to play like by doing spreads and stuff see what else are we looking at today guys I don't really have any earnings today we have like four earnings that these are some small companies we'll take a look at it in a little bit um tomorrow morning we got some bigger earnings we got so tomorrow we have chinko solar uh f-zone some miscellaneous companies and then after hours we got sales force zs scaler um a nba net app you have hackers enterprise the other day I think their printer edition reported the hardware edition reported um box that com as well global foundry is also reporting for the first time since IPO so that's going to be very interesting to see um that could that could potentially affect the you know the the the chip market as well um and then once they got built a beer in the morning built a beer beer beer after hours we got crowd strikes snowflakes ai this uh young bo's favorite company okay ta splunk five below elastics pvh it's a lot of interesting stuff between one thing there's that as usual um got dollar general as well um signet jewelry and krogers probably gonna look to open a play in krogers uh for this week for our earnings uh spread and stuff that's gonna be fun um spent some western very interested let me see where that moved today SWPI came back down so it might open a position to the bullish sign that I like the company I think I think they're gonna have another great earnings and and they could potentially benefit if there's a lot on certain things so thursday is going to be pretty interesting on the the cheap stuff like ali's outlets and dollar general those are two big companies that are in the consumer discretionary side um actually no consumer stable side that we're reporting ai dead for real big lots too but based on how dollar tree has been doing and um they've been facing supply chain issues so those company could have an issue but then again dollar tree has been like running up so um maybe those companies will react favorably to that oh yeah dollar dollar tree is dollar 25 now is dollar general dollar 25 general now are they doing that as well I mean that's actually quite bullish uh for these companies if they if they do that because have they announced that the dollar store is officially dead inflation has hit it so hard at die I mean can you imagine how big the inflation is for these dollar stores to go from a dollar to dollar 25 dude that's like uh 25 inflation man hyper inflation almost at this point if um if these dollar stores are are jacking up their price right by that much that's huge inflationary move so a lot of pressure there this is the end of the dollar store but you know what this is also a huge move for them though like if dollar tree and a dollar general and family dollar or those companies they're moving to a dollar 25 that's a that's a huge increase in margins man like if let's say if they're their supply chain costs has increased a little bit maybe like 10 but they're increasing it 25 percent they're there they just went from you know possibly breaking even they're not making as much money to making a buttload of money at this point um at high price so actually that could skyrocket a lot of these companies um and if dollar general decide to do the same thing um and all these other companies decide to do the same thing due to um inflationary pressure then that's going to be pretty bullish for them long term i would imagine let me see let me see how they're looking let me see dollar general dg dollar general ticker dg um for those people that are so degenerate that they have lost all their money and now the only place they can shop at is dollar general so dollar general this is uh January 2021 move so if they come down this way be nice but they actually moved a lot compared to 2020 levels so February 2020 the company was trading around 167 if they do end up coming back down and they do end up coming to like this 160 dollar range oh that'd be such a buying opportunity i don't think we ever seen it at low so they're up a lot actually compared to last year's they're up almost like six seventy dollars compared to last year's so stock was training 166 up 70s up about 30 40 percent um and if this quarter doesn't excel at that 30 40 increase we could see some some movement back so this is actually not supposed to be a good quarter for them um they're supposed to have a weaker quarter so we could see a little bit of pullback if that's a pullback i think it's a buying opportunity especially if they announced the dollar 25 increase dollar store steak is a thing yo you guys know about the secret about the dollar store steak how they inject like a few percentage of water in it just to make it worth it genius what's up three days no poop we're the fun at oh shoot is that why you guys are here today man that why the oh geezer here coming back for the for the flood for the the new uh covid you're not gonna lie i was pretty shook i was pretty shook on friday um because i when i like when i especially over the weekend to a red over the new so let's go over um let's go over the flood let's go over the flood you guys uh asking for so close to a market outlook we talked about a few things uh this morning in a market outlook post and i'll go i'll go over those few things that are kind of funny uh so let's see so you're talking about the market outlook um talk about each chart and what we need to know this week so we're looking for a strong job report that's what's expected if that doesn't happen you know things might not look good as well there's supposed to be talks with iran facebook is training under the new ticker and then opec is supposed to meet to decide production policies so uh biding kind of like kind of kind of just tell opec to screw themselves they're like yo we're gonna release a bunch of like oil from our storage facilities um and and like drive the oil price down so if opa opa might be pissed about that and they might be like you know what you're gonna do that we're gonna cut out cut down supply so if they cut down supply we can see some bounce in the oil industry um especially in the crude oil futures might see a bounce if they decide to cut supply due to the new covid situation that might be happening um this also you know Jeffrey Weinstein all deal with that and whatnot and then Fauci over the over the weekend actually talked about the new virus um the new variant from south africa um they said the new you know new variants are raising concerns has a lot more mutations spike than the delta variant and the delta variant was already supposed to be pretty um you know pretty serious right and we have seen a red carpet across like Europe where we don't see it talked a lot in the u.s. side but apparently the delta variant was pretty pretty um pretty wild it did increase a lot of cases across the world um and and caused the second round of spikes so if the the south africa variant is even more serious than that um which they're kind of downplaying it right now but if it's more serious than that in terms of mutation spikes then then that could potentially um put us back into the lockdown forever man forever boys forever it's over this is the end um so i think on friday they were talking about how travel ban you know like the uk was a possibility and today we saw that happen they came out and said that and what else happened new york declared state of emergency on friday we also have russia trying to attack ukraine or they're planning to they're just like they're just bullying them right now they're like yo we're getting your troops ready gonna gonna kind of massacre you guys uh like in january or something um in new years the next year is going to be the worst year for you guys and and i think the united states are kind of trying to back the ukraine right now so it could be something of like a proxy war where where you know it's like where where like russia is really trying to spit in our face you know if they're but they're just going to use ukraine as like um the person to do it so that's going to be something interesting there as that development continues um which could be a good and a bad thing because if we do end up backing them and we do end up going to war russia that could be a big war war man that could be a serious war and that's good and bad that um could be good for oil could be short term bad for the market okay also essentially drive economy i'm not sure that's a that's going to be something interesting that could potentially play out and not play out um it the the thing the thing to pick up from this is just that the world tension has been going up you know that's not the only tension in the world there's also you know the whole us back in taiwan versus china tension so there is there's a lot of tension throughout the world and and and you know this is just just a lot of factors that that could set up for a black swan event too because black swan events are usually events that we can't foreseen but we may to a certain extent understand it um at a certain level and then that could potentially crash the market one else right one else we do it on one thing though um a lot of the indicators a little bit off a little bit so on friday you know we saw that rejection off a qqq upper trend line huge rejection we had two percent drop in the market which we haven't seen that in quite a while in quite a long time in a single day so that was a pretty um ugly drop especially for people that are pretty new in the market and they haven't seen that before that was probably very very painful so we saw that that moved there spies coming back a little bit ideally we would love to see the move back to 454s or 448s those would be some some good moves as far as the cues we'd love to see a move back to 374s for a nice buying opportunity i don't know if we'll see that or not but those would be nice move financial sector i would probably start buying a little bit earlier around 3770s the xlf sector but but that's just because i i think the financial sector is a little bit safer than the other two sectors um but obviously you know we had a huge bounce already today i think that's just dead cat bounce that's just because we dropped so much on friday that we only bounced today um as a way to like what do you call it as a as a way to we set the rsi's i don't think that's a true bounce we'll find out tomorrow i mean we're starting to see a move back down already and and we already saw three billion dollars sell off at the market and close in balance so definitely a lot of people took profit today um it could have also been just a bounce for the the big boys to get out you know they needed to unload on somebody so that's a set of a bounce for for retail market to come back and pick up the bags is that so dollar index also kind of where it's this is dollar index has been running on stop which typically signaled that um you know that the the general market could be weak because of the dollar index is strong um then the general market would be down is back to the market but they've been moving in in tandem for for a while now and the other day was the first day kind of came down and we checked it so it might show some hope for the market maybe not but if they keep moving together that could that could signal the move of like another march 2020 move so that's something to be watched out for i would definitely stay hedged um start hedging your portfolio but better there's a few ways to hedge it if you guys are pretty new i can talk about that if anybody's interested but probably not i don't want to spread too much fear but that's pretty much it in terms of that fud facebook went down i'll tell you what was bullish though or what is bullish bitcoin's been pretty bullish um it's been trying to break out of this downtrend pattern so we're setting the resistance right now around 58 we can break above this next level 65 70s three days no put my man says i'll buy metaverse crypto i refuse to invest in mvrs why is that so you believe in the metaverse but you don't believe in facebook's metaverse because we hate sucker bird is that why oh you know what so actually um after all that fun right i think this could also be something that that could potentially kick start the metaverse um think about it like this right think about it like um remember march 2020 and and what happened march 2020 boys we had huge drop in the market everybody got locked down right and people had nothing to do people had nothing to do man they're just sitting at home doing nothing and and then apparently the gaming sector picked up right a lot of people started getting into gaming i mean even i got into like gaming i was playing call of duty a lot on mobile and and like it just like people started watching netflix more everything all those all those stuff went up a lot you know the netflix can't win up a lot because we wanted to lock down so if this if this new variant does end up becoming something very very serious in like two to three months you know and and it's like it gets totally out of control that could like be the beginning of this whole metaverse movement you know because they just released the oculus quest two i think and and like you know right now people don't really care about getting into the metaverse i mean there are people that like that like there are people that are huge behind the the metaverse right now but then there's a lot of people that just like don't understand it like what is the metaverse you know what is this like why would i want to be in it but but you know um if you but if you're at a point where you can't even live your life in the world what are you gonna do go into the virtual world you know i feel like that's that's the that's the next big big thing right now like get into the virtual world i i like you know i've been i've been pretty bullish on sand coin which is kind of like the roblox right but they're also like part of this whole metaverse development and things like that but um but i also been doing a lot of a lot of research and and i looked into a lot of interesting stuff i don't know if you guys like seen ghost on the shell um or like other animes and things like that where they're they're doing half dies both dives and and there's just a lot of interesting things man so i forgot i forgot why show does the whole dive i felt like it was ghost on the shell i could be wrong i could be remembering wrong but i was looking into it and apparently they have like half dives so for some of you guys that aren't so it's kind of it's kind of like jumping to the virtual world right um kind of like this so right now they have they have this vr i think it's like prototype or something where you're just sleeping on your bed right this is it's crazy dude it's crazy that i see my spouse spending a lot of my day in the middle of person in the future who knows bro and i might not see it now you may not see it now none of us will see it but it might be the norm it might be the norm you know it might be the norm dude yeah sure that's a that's a possibility like who knows man who knows right like just like how people got into like like video gaming i mean i don't know 20 years ago if you told everybody that people would be getting into gaming and get addicted to gaming you'd be like hell no you know you you want to see that like who we want to sit on the computer right who we want to be sitting on the computer playing fortnite when you can go out and play tags or your friends you know 2030 20 30 years ago if you said things like that people wouldn't believe it you know and that's the crazy thing about innovations and technology you know you can never see it coming a lot of times nobody could have sat there and said you know we're going to make dumb money um you know for making youtube videos like if mr beast told you to give him the hundred thousand dollar investment um because he wanted to do youtube videos and he'd tell you soon as he was going to return that money tenfold you would be like yeah don't think don't think so man i'm not going to invest in you mr beast but look at him now most successful youtuber in the world right so there just just goes to the concept of like things we can't foresee right nobody can foresee it sometimes it's it's just always it could be it could be who knows nobody really knows man but um i thought this was pretty interesting where like this hat dive so you just kind of like i feel like this is somewhat the future man like what what better way to go into the metaverse than to sleep today right next thing they do they're going to invest like they're going to make a pot for you and then they're going to feed you through the feeding tubes and and whatnot that'll be pretty cool man so and they also have the gloves now right where you can feel things and control things in the metaverse so you can't even feel boobies in the metaverse who knows man i don't know this could just be the beginning of something nutty we can now have real fever dreams for real slay some meta cuties that's that's the crazy thing man we will never know it's like there's so much things happening um anything to happen nobody could really see the future like that but this is um it's just the beginning and i think half dive is a pretty interesting concept because you know you're you're able to control it with your hand your feet is moving while you're on the bed like there there are going to be people that just like yo i don't want to be moving you know like sure you know you want to move in the metaverse but you don't really want to be moving like exercising and burning all that calories so there's a few different things they're trying to develop they're trying to develop the the the oculus rift version where you actually have to move your physical body and then there's this version where you don't have to move your body at all and and either of them could be really successful it is just it was just the beginning of the sensors man just the beginning of the sensors it's pretty crazy i i think it's a pretty interesting concept man we'll see we'll see where we'll see we'll see where this goal is in five years or 10 years and you know look at this bow dive tech at some point will be like at some point we'll all just be cyborgs man who knows man i mean you know what's crazy they even have like i i i'm pretty sure i read this a few years ago hard drive to store so i think i remember reading that they were looking to like to figure out how much hard drives to base it would it would need to store human brain and i'm pretty sure i read that um so this was a few years ago you know they said we will be able to store our minds on hard drive and i'm pretty sure i read that a few months ago that samsung had just achieved something like that where they have achieved a hard drive that you can store human brains and who knows man maybe that will happen someday and and you know kind of like what's that show on netflix alter carbon where like you know you can just save your memories on the hard drive and the rich people will be able to do it and and live longer than you expected but you wouldn't know you wouldn't know that you you're just a backup with yourself pretty crazy right and then you have the neural link you know where um where elon most is trying to make it so that everybody can communicate it's pretty wild it's pretty wild man things are things are just going all over the place and and there's also talk about web 3.0 um at some point we're going to be uploading memories of our skills and sounds of people to upload yo imagine that be pretty sick that be pretty sick man like our skills memory would be an nft that would be a good nft man you know like actually yeah that that would be a pretty good nft now that you thought you know now that we talked about it like we can we can upload a skill that we learned and and it'll be like limited you know limited to one yeah this is like this is like that player one um there's also a lot of talked about this other movie player one i think ready player one there's also a lot of talked about this where uh was it in uh in the year 2045 the planets on the brick of chaos and collapse people find salvation an oasis an expansive virtual reality universe created by eccentric james holiday um when holiday dies he promises immense fortune to the first person to discover a digital easter egg that's hidden somewhere in the oasis when young wei wants join the con contest he finds himself becoming unlike the hero in reality the new treasure hunt so it could be like that you know yeah that's true it's gonna suck mc being physical skills yeah i mean like that that's possible dude check it out check it out rb nicole i wish i wish school and work with big players not just games virtual shopping at the store actually if you think about it right um we keep talking about how there's so much impact on the environment all that stuff we're having huge supply chain issues man what is better at easing supply chain issues than virtual shopping like can you imagine all the supply chain issues that we're having right now because everybody want to buy things buy buy buy but then what if we just buy things in vr what's gonna happen it would completely ease the whole supply chain issue man sit in the chair if you had this in java tesla yo why not why not man that's actually i think that's actually doable that's actually pretty doable they just have to make it immersed enough where where you're like really really feeling it that's actually pretty cool concept virtual field trips you know we joke about this now we joke about this now but i think that's actually an interesting concept that could happen that could happen man like imagine one day schools have a budget and they use their budget to buy oculus rift right or the oculus quest whatever and everybody puts it on and then somebody builds uh somebody someone else builds like an actual like meta version of the pyramids and stuff and you'll you'll just be really able to go on that field trip that's that i think that's possible that's pretty crazy good concepts man my little cousin already went on the virtual field trip to the local aquarium wait really how's that what what's how i'm not really sure it's hard to say man um i feel like i don't i don't necessarily think so because we could get to a point where like you can even work in the meta version even people with no skills and money they can still work in the meta version man everything is on my man people forget how much like how much you can control by manipulating your brain so if they have like if they install like enough cameras like vr cameras and stuff at some point dude they could just like they could not just they could just like make it where you can walk into imagine you're doing a half dive like half dive into a aquarium that would be dope that would be pretty cool man it would be the end of travel the end of travel it's over forget about traveling no more traveling from now on is this the site hold on let me go into let's go into some earnings for today can you send me the that link in dm i can't i can't reach that link on this website i'm using to stream what a world we live in bro what yo that's actually pretty dope please smokes this this thing is a little wack though like how they like the movement it's a little bit wack they just like jumped you right there they just need to make this a little bit more vr friendly like they need to do more 360s and even let you zoom into this is this the future is this the future boys they should charge for this though yeah things like if it does look lame on the web browser because you're not in it you know you're still you're still able to see so many things but once you can get immersed into it it'll be completely different like for example um i remember when they made when they made uh vr goggles pretty cheap like you know the google vr goggles for daydreams right these are pretty cheap like i think like two years ago they just got like their cheap for like 40 dollars or whatever it's 30 dollars now but i remember like when these came out and they like mass produced them in 2019 2018 maybe not hundreds and sure when um i remember all my co-workers they they started talking about it at that time and they were like oh my god i think it's probably 2018 um because that was when i was still working for a corporate company and and they were all talking about this like oh my god you gotta check out this vr goggle you know you gotta watch like porn on it it's like a whole another level i'm like what that sounds so stupid you know it doesn't like what do you mean like how is this so much more different i didn't believe them you know so christmas came i ended up picking myself a vr set and i got it and i checked it out it was definitely a whole different experience like you got the headphone on you have you have everything on and like you have the goggle on it's like it it really it yeah it is like it's pretty wild it did change the whole like whole perspective on on how different it could make you feel you know i told my friends about it and i ended up lending them my vr set and guess what man i never got it back like one friend lent it to other friend the other friend and that was the end of my vr set i had i had a chance to use it like maybe three times and that was it man never got it back ever again but but yeah you're right it was it was pretty much kind of like the town the town bicycle at that point i wouldn't want it back at all anymore it's gone get it my one of my other friends he did end up offering to give back to me i was like i'm good bro just just consider my gift to you like my christmas gift to you oh that's a good point nastin a um you know how vr makes it dizzy and nausea in 15 minutes i i think that's like for each person as well and and i think that's just one of those things where like you're just not used to it yet but once you get more and more used to it it'll be a whole different experience um i think that's especially for for those people that are trying out the vr hitsets and like you know at the microsoft store because i did try that myself at the microsoft store and and it was kind of like it was kind of weird it did feel kind of dizzy a little bit i think i think that's also because like you're in a very busy environment and and you're just like you know you're not like it's it's not relaxed environment it's just very crazy and you don't have a lot of time to play around with it i don't even think like they don't even give you a chair to really sit in so you're just not comfortable you know so it's like just imagine if you just like bam went from went from sitting in your house to the next thing you're jumping on a plane right you're you're like you're jumping to a whole different situation so obviously you're gonna feel different i feel like if you slowly ease into it it'll be a completely different situation yeah that's true i actually hate those 3d glasses those actually gets me like giving me headaches too um but i think like with most things and just you know we're just not used to it man it just takes time for us to to really get used to it and and if we do get used to it it might be a whole different experience you know maybe they'll make a pill for it one day like those pills when you go and take an airplane stuff maybe they'll make a pill for that they'll start them young they'll start them young they'll do these in schools you know and and then and then with that you know you'll get adjusted so like like or like people for some people that hasn't like hasn't really like rolling cars and trolling cars right um sometimes when people getting cars um when they're like in a car they could get dizzy and nauseated because they aren't used to riding in the car but then after after a while after you've done it enough times your body automatically adjusts that so i feel like it's kind of like that a lot of times you just need adjustment to it and and that happens naturally over time i feel like dude you know what if i was a if i was a marketing exec for oculus rift you know do man i would start like a fun we'll start fun for all the public schools and and i would infect people early i would um i would like give like a super discount for schools like you know how microsoft gives like super discounted schools for my laptops right or like how apple used to like give out free macbooks or not macbooks uh what was it what was that other mac like like that mac desktop that the apple used to have right um and like i remember back in school i maybe not for you guys but back back back in school like back in my days we used to have these mac these macintosh pc's that was completely trash the only thing you could play was just safari on it you know and and um i could see like if i was the oculus rift i could see myself doing that man i don't know what it was it was like just just old old ass mac desktops man like these bring back the memories like these ugly ass desktops you know we would i i could see like giving every classroom like five oculus rift rift for something or like giving the school like just like 60 um because every classroom has 30 students right we'll give the school like 60 um so this way we'll leave like 30 as reserve the other 30 to to rotate so whatever teacher that want to take a few trip they can reserve the 30 for that class for that day and the students can go on can go on on the few trips you know using these vr goggles and and this would be one of the way to like move more people into them because what what what better way to do it than doing it when they're young you know i mean i feel like that's how apple became so successful and that's how microsoft became so successful the domination of apple and microsoft was infected people when they're young with their devices so like i remember back in the 2000 apple was like the worst company ever nobody wanted to touch them man but look how popular they are now but yeah food for thoughts if facebook is listening please give me some money for this idea thank you very much we warned me at least give me some at least give me something from the amazon wishlist please zuckerberg please thank you very much i appreciate you if zuckerberg is watching or somebody from oculus rift is watching here's my wishlist hi let's see let's let's check out some of the earnings for today this stone axe you've never heard of this company stone axe is a global brokerage and financial service firm and service offerings are execution risk management advisory interesting earnings per share is 36 cents does not compare to 144 estimate sales is 390 mil as well as 280 mil estimate we did it pretty good compared to last year but eps is not so well not much more than after hours some real estate slash investment company no movement they also reported pretty flat united health group sees four year 21s eps between 1875 to 1890 as opposed to 1885 estimate turn it in line a little bit lower ibn says as i see 1.5 billion revenue when we classify us this continued operation in q4 all right we got like 10 minutes left you guys want to check out some stocks let me know we'll chart off some stocks let's check out twitter whoa big move on twitter i did twitter move so hard today oh i know why it must have been a ceo change right and they remember reading that so let's see twitter is co-founder and chief executive jack dorsi is stepping down as head of social media firm immediately with chief technical officer so we place them i've decided to lead twitter because i believe the company is ready to move on from his founders who will remain a member of the board until his term expired the meeting of stockholders in 2022 in a letter to employees dorsi posted on the site he says he's worked hard to ensure the company can break away from his founding and founders dorsi's decision was first reported by cnbc and other media earlier monday and sent twitter stock up about 11 before the bell in afternoon trading the shares were down about point zero nine percent after the news was confirmed so this is this new guy was leading the exploration of the company's development velocity which is the number of features shipped per employee that contribute to either monetizable daily active users or revenue he joined the company in 2011 so he's been around the company for 10 years i look forward to building on everything we have accomplished on the jack's leadership and i'm incredibly energized by the opportunities ahead dorsi said the board ran a rigorous process of considering all options and this guy's appointment was anonymous oh wow they named the crm guy as board chairman i think that's pretty interesting typically when the ceo leaves it does cause the stock to crash a little bit so you know we we are seeing some uncertainty here ideally i would love for it to come back down to this level right here around the 44s um but overall i think it's a pretty good move i think it's a pretty good move for twitter because um i mean today could also be the fact of the reversal too so i think it's a good area to start a small position and possibly add if it comes back down to the 44.7 because i mean that's fine dude bonuses are there for a reason um what's up anthony like bonuses are there for a reason you know if he can perform he should he deserves to get the bonuses you know which just means that he'll have more incentive to really perform um but obviously there's a lot of times where people can manipulate that as well but i think this could be the beginning of the reversal for for social media and and twitter sector let's see how pinterest is doing as well pinterest can also use some reversal too um facebook and the daily setting up a little bit it could be could be the reversal for the whole sector who knows but i think that's a really good move because jack has been the ceo of square and twitter you know for the last few years and and everybody knows how hard ceo's job is and and for him to like move to africa i remember he he like he went to africa for a while um you know to look to see opportunity for the growth of square and and like if you're gonna do that who's really running twitter you know like you're it's it's really hard to really be at the bore at the top if you're not really there to to do that for the company so i think it's kind of good so i i agree i think i think it's a good buy the dip opportunity why not why not three days no poop why not let me sit and alert here though for this other level just in case the market comes down a little bit more and present the opportunity what um what position you got a month out let me see then we'll take a look at crm next why is so laggy is option strat dead they ban me gg option strat if this works i mean they ban me oh because the annual plan sucks that's right i said it all right so if we get a if we get a reversal on the it was they're like it's not it's not even that good of a deal it's like 20% off so let's say we get a reversal on twitter right i could see us potential come back to 60 levels um you know obviously obviously 58 first and then 60s right if i think we can come back to the 60 levels probably get a 55 call um could potentially go as far as june of next year it's not bad pretty cheap you went a month out so you probably picked the December 31st $116 you can pick june or march or go as far as march go as far as march $200 for a $55 call if it does make that move to 60 let's say best case scenario makes the move to 60 by the end of end of december um $200 will be $600 i mean no $200 will be $800 is trading view worth the money let me see wow they don't let me upgrade no more what a scam oh they do not really i don't think it's like really worth the money i mean it's $155 they give you five indicators for chart two charts in one window 20 server side alerts ad free it depends on how much the ad bothers you man honestly um if anything is worth it i probably say the pro plus is worth it the pro not really um if you're going to get something i also get the pro plus because you can get indicators indicators um you know uh like the only thing on the regular pro that you're getting that you can't really get from the free is you're just getting the custom time intervals and ad free and there's no ads you know and then and then possible like server side alerts multi monitor support man i mean yeah you mostly you mostly just end up better buying the custom script like these things five indicator for charts if you get a custom script they'll just merge all the indicators together so you know that's not really useful two charts in one window like you don't really need that unless you have a big screen yeah 100 like the ui is definitely the the convenience is there i mean i i have the i have the the max version just because like i don't really care about it um it is nice to have separate alerts and stuff what to ask and pretty much do everything they do i just like it because you can access it from different computers cobit so crm let's take a look at it oh anthony i remember you asked a little another question about crm a little bit earlier sorry i didn't get to that so you got maybe this little trend line here in crm would love to see it come back down to 270s maybe even 260s man 260s 250s be nice level we'll see we'll see where the earning takes it because um i think a lot of the cloud earnings has been pretty ugly they did end up taking over slack right so that could be interesting move for them um but if there's anything like splunk they might be able to come back down to the low 200s so you can see them come 250s a major support for them 260s as well in that range major support they got earnings coming up this week so i think that's going to be very interesting they look like they're having a reversal to the upside but we know how earnings can do we know how earnings can play this a lot and a lot of times it can look like it's moving to the upside but earnings can flop that real quick earnings can slap that shit down right back to the trend line um so i think first move is probably 280s if it's on the bearish side bullish side we can see it come back to all-time highs at 312s we'll really see what what the direction that is we'll find out this week on facebook let's check it out let me post the chart in the discussion channel facebook last time i charted we were i charted this trend line on on the upside we front we broke it actually broke the trend line which means that kind of going to a little bit it's a bearish territory after it broke the trend line i think on the bullish side we could see a move back up you know over here we did see the money flow crossover so that's kind of bullish on the intraday side and a half day chart so if you're bullish you could potentially swing the move to 340 range the 338 right now pretty not not that far away um if you're bearish next move would potentially be back to the 320s the csp okay well i think they have earnings this week as well we do have a long-term trend line on that let me show you what i'm looking at here bullish on splock right we could see a move back to long-term trend line so that's 119 area if you're looking to buy the dip so that's on the weekly chart this is on the smaller time frame so possibly if that area holds that could be a make or break this could be a big level for it to um see either buy the dip or go down from here so it's a it was a little bit interesting move man honestly close to the chart in the discussion channel x-trades if it bounces off the trend line here that's the 120 area 119 area that bounces we can easily see a move back to 137 that breaks under next move would be 111s and then further down i do have some leaps on splk so i have some spread leaps that i got a while back i'm looking to purchase back the sell side version so i'm overall kind of betting on the bear bullish side but we'll see we'll see man i think they're a little bit on the value but they're they're pretty cheap coming back to 2020 discount levels so maybe maybe it'll give us that 2020 discount level as $95 you know that would be a huge buying opportunity because they have been growing overall the earnings has been pretty decent it's pretty rare we see that with those opportunities but i think if we do that that could be a good area i think that's pretty much it for today i'm gonna end the stream here we'll be back here tomorrow to check out some of the earnings from crm and zs and box good luck on and have a good day guys take care