Tech Fallout From Russia Invasion

Russia's war with Ukraine started to impact investors choices. We'll bring you the latest in terms of the market moves, plus the growing cyber threat out of Russia after Ukraine's institutions were attacked. How big of a risk is there for the West as well? More than that later, and the amount of misinformation spreading online in the wake of

Russia's invasion is growing. How platforms are handling their role in urgeoning wall We'll get to all of that in but a moment, But first, the prospect of talks between Russia and Ukraine has been cast well hope, then doubt the Kremlin saying Kiev stops responding after rejecting Moscow's initial offer for a meeting in Minsk, Belarus. The most amory hooden is here with more and in an odd way, the market seemed to grasp on to this hope that

there could be talks between Ukraine and Russia. But tell us about the real truth here. Well, if there were to be, really the timing and the location would be incredibly important. So Russia first decided that they would like to hold these tasks in Minsk, Belarus, but that's not going to happen given the fact that Lukoshenko has allowed Russian troops to stay in Belarus and use that as

a base to then invade on Ukraine. From the northern border and the Belarus border to the capital of Kiev is about two and a half hours or three hours spending on which side of that river you you drive upon. So this is going to be incredibly interesting if these talks or to happen. But of course, one thing on the tables that President Putumont is a veto on Ukraine joining NATO basically neutralize Ukraine in terms of whether or

not it will join NATO or not. And Ukraine has constantly said they want to maintain that path to NATO membership and keep that door open. Meanwhile, that for next steps that you're going to be paying attention to, is we head towards the weekend. We've had so much of a global narrative China Wang and we've looked at other key leaders in the UK and NATO leaders, what next in terms of next steps for you? So today was

really about upping the sanctions against Russia. So we saw that European capitals as well as the White House just confirming about a hour ago at Press Secretary Jensaki talking about the fact that they are going home with sanctioning slav Roth, that Russian foreign minister, as well as President Putin himself. But this is largely symbolic, giving most of

his assets are relatively skimmed, that's official assets. But what's going to happen for the weekend, I think is really going to depend on what happens on the ground in Ukrane. I imagine if there's anything on the diplomacy front, it will be a lot of phone calls, but they'll probably wait until Monday. Caroline, is any more of this upping of the risk or are the potential penalties for Russia when it comes to sanctions? And Marie Horden, one of the busiest women out there this week, We hope you

managed to get some rest. Thank you so much for that. Meanwhile, of course the conflict in Ukraine has been tom of mine all week, but investors maybe taking a breath ahead of the weekend, maybe trying to reallocate, and men would have been a significant sell off during Thursday's trade to then rally higher. Ed Ludlow bring us the Friday big moves for US. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Position This is hope rather than substance on the talks between

Ukraine and Russia. But a lot of green on the screen. You see the sp the main gage of US equities up two point to is the biggest jump in a month, and it almost makes you forget the volatility of the week right such big declines over Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday sessions because of what we saw in Ukraine. Then as that one though very tech heavy and there it's kind of underperforming because don't forget traders are trying to make up

their mind. Now where we stand with the Fed in the outlook for rates, and note the US tenure yield there at one had been a little higher earlier and Friday were off by about a basis points softer by a basis point, so a lot to consider going into the weekend. But a sigh of relief, which is interesting. I'm going to go ahead to semi conductor. Semi conductor is really interesting one. A big focus on Thursday's sanctions package was restricting access to technology for Russia, semi conductors

being a big part of that. You see the socks. Yes, we underperform the SP five. We're still at one point six percent UM. Well, those that are willing to discuss it, semi conducts covering this is saying, well, if suppliesn't go to Russia, we have a long list of customers waiting for chips, will just send it somewhere else. Demand is

so great and video also interesting. They coming out with statements saying that they have had some kind of hack to their internal systems, not doing too much for the stock actually rose and sort of late gain and Fridays session up one and forward up four percent, despite idling one of its most profitable lines in Kansas City for the one ye Caroline shortage of semi conductors. Very quickly, let me talk about Dell, because twenty four hours ago you and I were so focused on Russia Ukraine. This

is Dell. Over the last six days, six straight days of declined we had earnings for the fourth quarter of Thursday night, a weak profit outlook. Why supply chain disruptions, rising costs, they can't service demand. I'm going to be mean. I know I shouldn't do this on a Friday, but let me just read to you this long list of superlatives. The biggest drop since April for the stock on Friday, at one point it was facing the biggest drop on record.

The stock is at its lowest level since September of six September, and this run of six days of declines is the worst streak of declines since October twenties, so something clearly not going right. For del of course, such a legacy name in the world of technology, you might

have missed that one. For everything that's going on the world in the last twenty four hours, well for shining a light on it, because there's plenty where sing amid well, what is a turbulent time in geopolitics, And indeed the market said loudly, we thank you, let's get even more insight on the tech sector. Is slightly remarkable moves don ives a web Bush, who, of course, at the beginning this week, had said that really the situation you were playing couldn't have come at a worse time for tech.

And then the bounce back, what is this? Is this that you know we've seen so many bear respects put on, that we've seen so many shorts already that we sort of see the bounce back. Now. Look, I think it's the most oversold. It's the most oversold that I've seen tech stocks in the last six years. And I think

that's essentially what's what's really playing out here. I think it was oversold in terms of tech, and now you're really starting to see a bounce, like especially with the tap wind defend, it's gonna be a slower fed hike that's starting to get factored in fifty bits off the table, and it's oversold in terms of tech. That's where we

show the bounce back. Therefore, if we start to reassess what happens mark six, because we don't think we're going to get a double hiker fifty basis point move, but we start to tamper down our expectations for six seven right hikes over the course of the year, who wins them in the tech sector. I think it's a combat. I think you've got to look at this two large traps are gonna be safe. The names like Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Cisco safety blanket names, and you see more and more

rotation towards tech. I think you're starting to see a little more of a risk on dipping the toe in the water. And then you look at cybersecurity. I think some of these cybersecurity names, I in my opinion it's going to be the sector of tech that PIOUP performs the most, not just because I think valuations to go overall growth. And then you look at the Ukraine situation, that's gonna be a potentially two to three tellent names like pow out or CrowdStrike, z scale or ACT among others.

And then then that's why this is one you go into the weekend, despite the horrific situation in Ukraine, at least from a style market perspective, TEX feels like that over sold and I think we we're starting to put at some sort of bottom in here at with some untech. Okay, interesting, And I'm your perspective in terms of you know, the allocation to big tech has a haven or not. Do you think that it rides that wave in some way or is this really about trying to understand the valuation

element to it all. I think part of it valuations are way over sold, you know, relative obviously, from the beginning of the year, we've seen most techdown twenty percent. Oh out of these down relative to growth, I think it's some of the most attractive valuations we've seen going back two thousand sixteen. But I think when you look at overall growth, which is important, that's not changing because

of the situation here. And I think when you look at overall tech that's really really what I think resoning with investors in terms of some of these levels. And lastly, it will sort of been over perhaps there's also some of the A is syncratic news, some of the M and A news, you know, zendesque and terminating deals. Are

we expecting fewer combinations here? Consolidation here is there's still plenty of opportunity to be had when we're thinking of those sorts of eventualities to make us want to get into certain tech names. Oh, I think there's going to be actually an acceleration M and A because of what

you're seeing on some of the oversawled names. From evaluation perspective, I think names like Microsoft are going to be aggressive when it comes to specifically areas like cybersecurity, I think you'll see strategic eminate as well as financial And this is something I think behind the scenes you have a lot of investors really focused on which are some of these oversawled names you'd be looking at. I think a lot of PE names like cybersecurity and some of the

cloud names in particular, just way oversold. Don I's on the technicals as well as some of the fundamentals at play. We thank you so much of web Bush. He has just been a fun of knowledge when it comes to check out. Was on the Bloomberg terminal as well. Amid these dramatic days, you don't have to move tanks, you don't have to move armories. You can just use your keyboard to get across, which you think as an active art of war in an asymmetric manner. So it's also

something very difficult to move back against. So, for example, and Fresher strikes us with a cyber blow, what is the US going to do? And so that's definitely what he conceives as an excellent use of his arsenal. That was forming US Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security, Matt Hayden. They're talking about the threat of cyber attacks from Russia, not just on Ukraine but also here in the West. Let's begin Mandian's head of Global Intelligence, Sundra Joyce, to

talk a little bit more about that. The most phenomenal resume in terms of the amount of well Master's degrees that you hold in cyber policy and international affairs. Just talk to us in here and now, Sandra. What you are telling your clients, how would they need to be well, what we're telling them is that they need to be prepared,

but not to panic. The fact of the matter is that Russian cyber aggression has been going on for many years, and a lot of the preparations that organizations are making for ransomware and other attacks that are the same preparations that we're asking them to make today. Any industry groups that are more vulnerable than others, or indeed that you feel could be undergreater threat than others, well, the risk of of reciprocal action against or cyber action against US businesses.

The risk of that does go up with the application of sanctions, and when we're looking at reciprocity, a lot of the sanctions are based on financial effects. We might expect to see some action against the financial sector, but it wouldn't be just limited to the financial sector if it were to happen. And that's because cyber attacks can create effects across all industries, um and and that is

really what I believe the Russian aggression is about. It's about creating fear, doubt, uncertainty, um and that's going to be very powerful if they can actually get that done. Feared doubt, uncertainty was certainly increased in Ukraine amid that were not one but two cyber attacks. It seemed to be more d d OS distributed denial of service attacks and an inability to communicate, particularly with their front lines. But I'm interested in what types of attacks you might

see in Ukraine would also perhaps close to home. Isn't that sort of attack or is it more ransomware that we need to fear? Well, what we should be thinking about is what is the effect that the Russian government would be trying to to get. So they could use a very low sophistication technique like a DIDOS attack, but what is accompanying with that or things like text messages. We saw this in Ukraine, text messages going out to banking customers telling them that the banks were down, that

they wouldn't be able to get their money. That is an effect that's really cognitive, it's psychology iCal. I think that what we're going to be seeing from that Russian playbook is as psychological attachment to any of the cyber actions that they're taking trying to drive down the resolve the people. The application of sanctions and their effectiveness is really driven by the willingness of the people to support them.

And if Russia can get uh, you know, their target population, whether it's in Ukraine or elsewhere, to start doubting their government to weaken their resolve, then they will have achieved the effect that they're looking for. Okay, so give us as a consumer, but also the clients that you speak to as sort of quick one. I one of what we should be looking for how we should be acting in this carent environment. Well, really what we need to be doing is looking for anomalies in our networks. We

should already be practicing cyber hygiene. Um, what run that playbook? If you know that you're going to be taking actions separating networks or segmenting them, who's responsible for that is your general counsel part of your tabletop exercises. If not, they should be. And a lot of this will also require a connection to your your PR or media relations team, because if you are a target of significance, there certainly is going to be a lot of messaging around that.

In fact, you can expect things like defacements or a narrative come out that could be completely fabricated. So really what organizations need to be doing is to prepare in the way that they would have been preparing for any ransomware attack or any type of other breach of their network. Get the playbook in place, and then remediate and press on because our resilience is very important here. It's essential not to panic. Companies get breached every day and they

do continue once the remediation is complete. We of course talk a lot about defense, but we started for I feel at the first time to hear from the potentially the administration to talk about offense when it comes to cyber well attack to ascent degree, what do you think could be deployed to be a will to, you know, take it back upon Russia in some way. Well, the U. S Military of course has every option available to them,

and it doesn't need to be a cyber response. In fact, if military action UM were to come, they would there will be quite a few different options. But one thing to remember here is there are multiple instruments of national power. If the United States decides that it's going to go on offense, it can go on offense in many ways, diplomatically, economically, UM.

Even in within the breadth of military tools. There are low level UM you know, things that can be done all the way to some of the more sophisticated UM attacks that could happen. But really it's not about the mode and mean of it what it is. It's about the effect. What effect do you want to reach and how is the most efficient application UM that you can

put out there to gain that effect? And quickly, Sandra, the people, Well, the places these attacks coming from is becoming easier and easier to identify very quickly, because that seemed to have been one of the case, was to ensure that we knew that these are coming from Russia, even if it wasn't exactly from the government itself. Well, we do know quite a bit about the Russian threat is cyber threat apparatus over this several years that they

have been conducting attacks UM. Not only the governments, but also commercial companies like my own have enumerated a lot of their capabilities, and so we know quite a bit about them. They've been operating in safe harbor in Russia or in adjacent areas for quite a number of years, so a lot is known about them. Uh. The the thing that gets tricky is that it is they've been operating in an area where we have thus far not had jurisdiction or a lot of options in order to

stop the activity. Really great to get your expertise amid this current environment. Sandra Joyous many and executive vice president and had a global intelligence Pretty busy women, I think. Meanwhile coming up, YouTube massively popular in Russia, and now Google is facing pressure to cut back on ties to pro Russian channels sase countries continue to sanction Russia. Will discuss the knock on effect for some US based businesses.

This is Bloomberg. So with sanctions on Russia ramping up following its invasion of Ukraine, certain companies like well Google's YouTube are under pressure to remove or cut commercial ties with some of its most prolific pro Russian channels. For more on this story, I'm joined by Bloomberg's Mark Bergen, who covers Google of course Alphabet the parent company, and done a great deep dive on this just how deep do these relationships run? Mark, You know, that's that's hard

to say. It's kind of a repeat of seventeen. If you remember, there was a lot of criticism around Russia Today and Russian influence after the sixteen election that clearly a lot of that was around some of the bought networks that hit Facebook and Twitter. But on YouTube, you know, Russia Today advertiser itself. You can go look at their English page as the world's most popular news channel on YouTube.

They're tremendously successful for formula subscribers. They've built up UH in part with the very aggressive digital strategy, and they're

part of a network. There's some analysts that estimate close to a hundred channels that have commercial ties to entities that are under the under lesser sanctions prior to this past week UH, and now there are you know, the EU and the UK and the US are introducing new section sanctions that impact individuals either prominent TV journalists that have YouTube channels or members of the close to the Kremlin that have connections with media, and a lot of

Russian media is very popular on YouTube. Interesting, So how does one go about cutting it? I mean before we see them label indeed sort of some of these sorts of state funded videos and channels. But do you just cut it off in tally? How how do you control it? Uh? So, you know, at this point, YouTube has only kind of come out and said that they're looking, they're paying a lot of attention to misinformation, and that's been something we saw Senator Warner kind of call it out his his

turn with propaganda. The clearer I think commercial ties with with YouTube is they run ads, right, they have a revenue split with all their YouTube channels, and so every ad you go and see, you know, I was just looking earlier this morning. You know a lot of these, at least in the US there they had they run commercials. That's a split with with YouTube. YouTube could decide to demonetize and no longer run ads on those channels which

they have on in some cases. Uh, they're clear list even some former Google lawyers that are sort of calling for them to make more drastic measures and actually cut those channels off Entirely interesting. Once again, very difficult conversations I'm sure being having at an executive level. Marked is the response. Also, though, if it's not on Alphabet's own YouTube,

it's being forced elsewhere. How much are we seeing still YouTube being used by such news organizations or indeed state funded organizations, or are they going on to other parts of the internet. It's a YouTube and prominent What the interesting thing about YouTube is that it's both popular in Russia for a lot of the state backed media and sort of pro Kremlin media. It's also been a huge asset for the opposition. Uh naval one whose opposist and

leader has a massively popular YouTube channel. YouTube Boston likes to point out that in a country with take controls of state media and broadcast, YouTube does offer avenues for criticism, and I think that's a fair and valid point. What's also happening is that they are under incredible amount of pressure, even prior to this past week from the Russian government around there's been this contention around a particular YouTube channel

that that YouTube blocked. That was and then there was a court fine, and now they're paying a regular daily fine. Google is um they're under increasing pressure along with Facebook and Twitter to take down accounts that the Russian government has has told them or either extremist or or using the guys of misinformation Mark Bergen, It's a great story, Go and read it. Google faces sanctions dilemma with pro Russia YouTube channels. We thank you so much breaking all

down for us. Stay well, this is technology. I'm Caroline Hyde in New York. Now, as we headed into the end of what was a pretty tense week, to say the least, investors still making sense of how to navigate the situation of course between Russia and Ukraine, and Ludlow is here with what has been a remarkable rally actually into the end of the week. Yeah, has and you're you're trying to work out what your exposure is in

financial markets. You're also trying to work out which companies and stocks are going to be impacted in the short and long term. And this is a discussion we've got to have around social media, Meta, parent company of Facebook and also Twitter, of course, you know Meta coming out saying that Russian authorities ordered them to stop fact checking and labeling posts on the Facebook platform by state run media,

to which Facebook declined to do so. An interesting and list at Bloomberg Intelligence jumped on this really quickly, saying that in the case of Meta, you could see one or two percentage points of a hit to daily active users. But which company might benefit here? Twitter really interesting? We know this from the Olympics, right, we know this from

the Super Bowl. Twitter is an event driven platform and Bloomberg Intelligence estimating they could actually get a short term boost for their active users from what's going on on the ground in the Russian Ukraine. No matter how tense and difficult it is to see for a far, it's also interesting to see where capital is flowing. We look at some of the e t F, so I love to take a look at the ETS space on a Friday.

Caroline arcis a name so familiar to us, right, this is the big fund, Kathy word and Arc money has been going into this fund the last couple of days. Big gains over a two day based I think ten and a half percent over the last for the eight hours or so. But if you compare that to the Van Eck Russia ETF, which also saw a big rebound on Friday and saw influence, you have to ask about what the psychology of investors is here, because this was a big rebound right in the van k ETF that

was a massive drop Wednesday Thursday. This is an e t F that tracks Russian equities. Now you have people coming in. Are these bottom feeders? Are these guys coming in trying to buy the bottom or are they looking at shorting Russian equity? Short interest in that et F gaining as well. But what's the rationale is going into arc if you look at the performance of these ets relative to their fifty two week highs all over the last twelve months. In other words, we bring up the

next board. There's a real difference in what's going on here. These are two very different e t s tracking very different basket of stocks, but on a fifty two week basis or a draw down from a fifty two week high, we are in pretty much the same place. So the point I'm making his investors seemed to take stock on Friday and say, I'm going to go back into technology stocks. I'm going to go back a little bit into this e t F that's tracking Russian equities and see what

my exposure is going forward. And Ludlowe, great way to wrap up an extraordinary We thank you so much. Now we want to turn our attention to the role of social media and what's currently occurring in Ukraine. Russia, of course no stranger to peddling this and disinformation, especially now as it tries to shape the narrative of the war it created, announced that it was restricting use of Facebook due to the company fact checking content posted by state

run media. In a statement Metters, Nick Clegg wrote in part, ordinary Russians are using Matters apps to express themselves and organize for action. We want them to continue to make their voices heard, share what's happening, and organize for more on all of this, and very pleased to be joined by Margherita Kniev, which is the Associate director for the Center of Security and Emerging Technology, along with Brett Schaffers, a senior fellow at the Allie and the Securing Democracy Waits.

The first and foremost, what's the playbook we're currently seeing out of Russia at the moment. I think it's been a standard combination of things that we've seen before with an influx of some new messaging. It is a reiteration of the narrative that NATO expansion has driven Russia to defend itself, which is obviously a disinformation taxing designed to justify the current attacks and a lot of the probably

atrocities that will be seeing increasingly. So another emphasis is being put at dissuading raordinary Russians from taking a stand

against the conflict and against the war. And I think we're soon are also going to be seeing an argument that those domestic protests are being driven by external uh CI A fermented uh those points that we've seen before, So in combination of targeting domestic audiences as well as looking externally, it's tools that Russia as honed in its previous disc information and disupervision compans in Ukraine and then in Sey area, and now we're seeing it repeated again

in a way that it's been difficult to tackle for those media companies that you discussed Everlire, Yeah, Brett, difficult to tackle, and particularly when Russia's sort of saying no longer wants to be using the metal platform in that respect. How do you see social media companies such as YouTube by Google, Alphabet Matters, Facebook and Instagram, how do you how do you see them being able to respond to this in the real time? Yeah, I think it's going to be a real moment of reckoning for the US

social media companies. I mean, for years they have tried to be neutral platforms where they have allowed different perspectives to exist. Yes, they have labeled Russian state media outlets as being Russian state media outlets, but they've also labeled US government the state media outlets. I think at some point they may be forced into taking sides here, and frankly, that choice may not be theirs, because I think the Russian government is going to continue to crack down on

Western social media companies. Of course we saw that today, but I think it's it's possible, if not likely, at some point that the Russian government, if this content, if this conflict continues to escalate, that they will just cut off access to Twitter, Facebook, Google for their own domestic population. And to that end we to how effective would that be. Of course, we will know a VPN when we want to use one, But I'm interested is to what outlets

already people are using. How much perhaps Ukraine Russian people have preempted the fact that it might be hard to to access set in Western providers. Absolutely, and I think in modern society you can never really hermetically seal a country anymore, especially a country that has already been integrated into um the outside world, We're not talking about North

Korea here or even China. We're talking about a country has been Ukraine itself has been fully integrated into Europe, and even the great parts of Russia are been European facing. So the apps that even if we're seeing, you know, reduced access to Facebook, we just talked about YouTube being a meaningful platform that regular Russians follow. They're also use WhatsApp and Telegram, and those are apps that will continue

to be a way for people to communicate. In the same time imlently, we're also seeing the spread of disinformation there. So I don't think Russia will be able to gramatically seal um the internet as we know here, but there's no argument that they will try to control the information that is reaching Russian citizens much more tightly. And Brett to that point, you know, how, how is it a good way of layman terms to be ensuring that you're

not being targeted by misinformation that we're not. I mean, we just heard of the cyber attacks that could have the ways in which they're sending text messages to people and there like, how do you feel that from a social media despite if people couldn't really try to with rigor understand what's true what's not. Russia has significant information capabilities, and that starts, of course, with their state media outlets that are very active. They're very successful across multiple social

media platforms. Those are the easy ones to deal with because we know what they are. They're attributable, so they can be labeled. UH information consumers understand where the information is coming from and the intent behind it. What gets a little bit trickier is Russia also has significant capabilities

in the covert space. So we know that they've run troll farms, They've run pages presenting themselves as being sort of genuine American political opinion of pages, but of course have been connected back to Russia, so they have ways of messaging and capability that doesn't make it entirely clear where the information is coming from. This is even very difficult for the social media companies to ferret out, so

it's information can humors. I think we just have to remain vigilant and very skeptical because Russia has ways of reaching us that don't necessarily come through outlets that identify themselves as having a connection to the Russian government and reached it very briefly. The amount that's been spent by certain companies to beef up the AI to ensure they can take down volts too, you know, to be a fact checker of choice. Do you think that's enough? Is

there still so much work to be done? Or have they manage done on they can to a stain extent. I think there's a lot more to be done, and not just in the that automatic uh false actor bot space. There's a lot to be done in an area that we're uncomfortable to deal with. And it is the fact that you know, like Bread mentioned, there are what appears to be legitimate Western political obinionformers that are then later discovered to be Russian boats or Russian influencers masquerading somebody else.

At the same time, we are also dealing with actual, real people in the West who are of political influence one way or another, who are, whether intentionally or unintentionally, end up amplifying a lot of the Russian messaging. And there is something that I think Americans and people throughout Europe should be much more cargnizant of hold ourselves to account to Margarita, can I if we thank you so much, Brett Shaefer, We expertise from you both. We thank you

for it. Have a good weekend. Meanwhile, coming up the fight of a control for information in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, we're talking with are We've, decentralized storage network built on a blockchain like data structure, and it's designed to provide permanent data storage saved from state censorship.

We'll discuss this is bring back now. Of course, crypto has been a focus throughout the Ukraine Russia attention, in large part because of the price moves, but also because of the ways in which maybe some oligarchs could or could not be using the technology. But also let's talk a little bit about how we could use the technology underlying technology, not in nearly ideally blockchain per se, but this time block We've is something that we could be

looking at. Are Weave as a Berlin based blockchain startup that built an archival platform for permanent data storage as a means to actually counter state censorship of online information sources. Are we founder Sam Williams joins us now and very pleased to say so do does our lead in our crypto discussions. But mentionality back second, Galie, I want you to take it away first with Sam yes, Sam, you know, I think this situation Ukraine is such an interesting example

of where storage decentralized could be applicable. Or can you explain what's happening when it comes to Ukraine and the types of information you're able to store in a decentralized way. Yes, well, we think that in order to learn from the past effectively, we need to store the past in such a way that it's not going to be altered over time. So

we've built a ledger. It is decentralized in natures throws this information in hundreds, if not thousands of places across the world um and then back to that storage where the sustainable endowment UM And essentially what our community has done has created archiving box that are putting approximately a million pieces of data a day into this system and replicating it around the world such they can't be altered

in essentially forever. Can you tell us a little bit about whether or not we're already seeing your technology being used.

How are you deploying effectively an ability to ensure that what is currently being written in history remains so well, we use cryptography to back the system in to make sure that information can be changed once is put inside the network and then we have a system similar to proof of work with bitcoin, except we use storage essentially story and the data set as the work in the system, and that proves that the data has not changed over a large period of time. I'm wondering how people use

the data after its stored. You have this instance, for example, where Senator pat to Me had talked about are weaves use of the technology in order to store work when it comes to Apple Daily in China and the inability for the government to erase the information that surrounded Apple Daily. So how then does the US or other people and actors and governments start to take a look at the data that is being stored. Well, I think the key thing is that that information is available all across the

not just from the US. So when a piece of data is stored inside are we, you can collect that data from hundreds, if not thousands, of different places. So while China may have successfully unfortunately removed the stand or or Apple Daily from the Internet, they really can't remove access to are we even any serious fashion. And that means that information is still available to local populists if

they want to access. Just remind us of of course, with every of the protocol tends to come and token and the all we've token And in particular, how's it as incentivizing people to be using your your particular provision. How many people are using it on the UH story

side or on the posting side? If so? Well, either way it's it's about hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people on the story side, UM, and then there's hundreds of two thousands depending on the time, about nine hundred right now, I think data stories that are replicating their information around the world. Well, speaking of funds, and you're announcing fundraise, right, so what will you do with the funds? You know, you have some really interesting large

backers and recent Heroitz blockchain capital coin based ventures. To what degree can you grow using the new funds? Well, I mean we've we've taken the destent from many a few people over over the years, and also many of those people that you just mentioned will support the tokens just from the open market. But UM, the key thing for us, they think is backing the new founders UM in the ecosystem. They using the technology that we've created

two new use cases. So for example, our drive producing the rub Ecosystem just raates eighteen million dollars in order to create enterprise solutions on top of the system that allow businesses to store their data into vacuity as well, which of course it's very important for compliance reasons. Sometimes we want to be thanking you for your time. Sam Williams, of course are we founder, and we want to thank

Shanelli Bassa for bringing having us bring that interview. And clearly some use cases currently being evolved as we look between the Russia and Ukraine invasion. With Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it's been of course accompanied by cyber attacks actually pre emptying it to a certain extent, and now the question arises, how do you prepare for cyber conflict? Can you glean hints from history? Our next guest has some insights into

just that. Znowski is a threat hunter of sorts as security software companies so farce it's great to have some time with you and talk to us about what we've learned in previous years and previous I mean we've learned what perhaps sanctions due to Russia in their response, what has their response been in terms of cyber well, it's been quite a history, you know, most nation states haven't really been caught doing too much, but with Russia there

was a lot of information to mine. There were you know, they started doing cyber attacks against Estonia back in two thousand seven and followed that with attacks against Georgia a

little after that. Of course, there were attacks during the Crimean invasion U we've even seen them mess with Kurzakhstan and other countries as well, and so we were kind of able to kind of put together a bit of a map of things as you see there on the screen, and depending on the types of attacks, there's always a bit of a pattern to it, which is what we call denial of certain risk, but in essence taking down you know, news and government websites, that kind of thing

to create confusion, followed by a lot of other types of attacks told to us about the other types because we've seen the DIDs attacks so far, in particular affecting Ukraine.

But what next, Well, you know, we we saw a little bit of activity earlier this week, just before the land invasion, which is again something we've seen before in Russian operations, which are not attributed to Russia yet by any government agency, but it's suspected these white so called wiper attacks, which in essence is a computer virus that gets on your computer and instead of stealing information or things like that, it simply wipes the hard disks so

the computer is inoperable to sort of disrupt things. Uh, and we did see some of that on Wednesday this week, right before the land invasion. Interesting and we're just talking to Sam Williams. Well, we've about how to be protecting your data and enshowing it can be stored for longer periods of time, and what about people in terms of how stress the systems already are by the fact that many of it are working from home at the moment. Is that I haven't got the level of cybersecurity that

we should have. Have we learned the lessons of past. Unfortunately we're our cybersecurity is not in good shape anywhere globally, and particularly in Ukraine where resources were more limited than perhaps we have in the West as financially. But the

pandemic has not helped this either. Right, We've we've opened more remote doors to provide access to our networks and our information then we normally would have, say publicly facing and as a result that is that many more opportunities for criminals or nation states to exploit that that openness. And in past we've of course talked about the vulnerability of infrastructure, in particular power of structure and the like.

Is that what we should be suspecting this time? What does history tell us about where we should look vulnerabilities going forward? It's really hard to say. I mean, I'm not a political scientist, so I don't want to comment too much on the politics of it, but it would certainly seem at this point we've moved into a phase where sort of nonstate actors are taking over as sort of patriotic hackers, if you will. Um, the Ukrainian president Zelinsky called on Ukrainian patriots to try to hack back

at Russia. UM, we've already throughout the day today, it's been evolving. We've seen several criminal groups that are largely believed to be based in Russia make probably public proclamations that they're going to come after US and Western assets and retribution uh for the sanctions or whatever other penalties were imposing on Russia. And so that's ransomware? Is it that they'll be coming off? Do do do you think certainly ransomware groups of the ones that have been chattering, that's

for sure. They're not limited to ransomware necessarily. The one particular ransomware group known as Kanti has, in our experience uh performed some of these wiping attacks when they weren't paid the ransom in a previous ransom attempts. So they could certainly get even nastier than taking our data and simply abuse access. They may have already footholds that they have inside of Western assets and just delete things to be disruptive. Chat. How many cools are you getting at

the moment? So what are you doing to help your clients? Uh, Well, it's it's a busy time, and you know, the the challenge for each individual organization is identifying what their weaknesses are and on short notice, what they may be able to do to try to mitigate some of the risk of being victimized. And so there's been a lot of long, well thought conversations with some of the larger clients, just having conversations about what can you do right now to

make the best of the situation. What do you watch for to know that something may be underway where you may want to batten down the hatches. One thing that we should look for. Well, certainly, um, we've seen a lot of abuse of unpatched networking equipment. So back to

that COVID pandemic question. All of us working from home with VPNs and things, the Russians have persistently abused those flaws when they're not fixed, and so certainly making sure those fixes are applied, and monitoring the network very careful for unusual activity, especially things that may involve the you know, large quantities of data being transported at off hours are often signs of an extortion or ransomware attack. Chat. Really good to speak with you, Thank you so much, checks

very much, principal research scientist at so Fast. Meanwhile, that does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. You want to stick around though all Street Week. It's up next my colleague David Weston of course leading that as always Larry Summers there to discuss and a real deep dive into an extraordinary week and when we actually saw us

benchmarks closed them week higher. He's going to be joined by Jane Harmon, president of the Wilson Center, alongside Kate Morricy, a black Rock Global Allocation team and former Trasury sectary. As I mentioned, Larry Summers stay with him From a clearer New York, wishing you all a well weekend. This is Bloomberg