From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Just gonna walk down the street real quick for this one. Money's kind of weird, right, are you guys into money?
It's not real.
It is a requirement, at least to some extent, a necessary evil.
And you guys will recall several years ago put out a standing challenge to all of our fellow conspiracy realists in the crowd. We said, can you delineate or determine any meaningful difference between the concept of economy or money and the trappings of religion? And just an accountability check here, I'm pretty sure no one can prove a difference.
Thanks for being our accountability buddy.
Ben.
I keep trying to think of like, Nope, it's just it's kind of makes them up, make them up seats.
Yeah, because it's articles of faith at some point, after some certain threshold. I mean, look at the stock market. Not to get too topical, uh, but the thing is, despite being all kinds of malarchy, the human world does move at the whims of money and of those who control it. So money can make you powerful, but you also get a disadvantage. It can make you a target. That's tonight's conspiracy. It's a twisting thing we barely touch in a strange news segment. We didn't have time to
get to it. But the nation of China has hacked the US Treasury, which is crazy because that's one of the most important financial institutions across the planet.
But it was fine, right, Everything's okay, everything's great. No question is great question for you guys. Do you think it's possible to manipulate the stock market by announcing tariffs and then pulling them back at the last minute. Do you think that's intentional? That's what I told him to do, so yeah, you know, you guys.
Are tight, just wondering.
We were talking about manipulation of currency, of this idea of wealth and of value, and I just think, you know, that's sort of an interesting thing to point to how easily, given enough power, these things are changeable.
M H.
And today we are talking about specifically a time that some people hacked into the US Treasury Department last year, in early December of last year. But it is not something that just occurred, you know, that one time. It is an ongoing situation.
Yes, well said, And that brings us to our question what happens next? To learn more will have to start from the beginning, not like the beginning beginning, but you know, a mid beginning.
First, let's take a quick word from our sponsor, and then we'll jump right in.
Here are the facts. Let's be honest, most people across the planet, including residents of these United States, we have some understandable misconceptions about the United States Treasury, the provenance of it, the function, the mission, you could say it. We even a few years back, I remember when we were all collectively surprised to learn that the Secret Service functions under the Treasury. That was that was kind of creepy, honestly.
Yeah, until they got moved into Homeland Security.
Cool, which is totally not a weird.
Amorphous thing that's different.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I appreciate you saying arms instead of tentacles. That is accurate. The maybe we do like an origin story of the US Treasury because one thing that might surprise a lot of our American conspiracy realists tonight in Canada, Mexico, the US, and the Caribbean is that the Treasury is actually super old. It's like one of the first things the founding fathers put in their paperwork or in their pitch, in their look book for I mean.
How are you going to do capitalism without a really tight US Treasury?
And this was wars need funding also true.
And this was established in seventeen eighty nine as an executive division of the federal government. Its jobs to advise the president on financial physical matters, and perform certain.
Law enforcement activities.
Manufacturing currency as well as stamp which I believe it wasn't more stamps at one point I'll referred to as legal tender in some way. Yeah, I guess that's right.
Anyhow, I mean, that's that money in religion. Everything's money if you believe in it hard enough, that's for sure.
Just on stamps because they hold a certain value, right, And it is a bit amorphous, a bit strange when they changed over to forever stamps, and right, that's kind of I don't know. I still don't fully get that because I used to watch as the price of stamps would kind of incrementally increase.
Maybe that is the move or the reason I was thinking about that, because it's that change certainly made that not be as much of a thing anymore. You know, the idea of the value of stamps, there's got to be some index that can be observed, you know, for like what the value of forever stamps in general. Arm No, but that that you pay once and then they're good forever. It's not the whole deal.
That's Yeah, that's the idea increasingly uh increasing for the government.
Yeah, maybe, I don't know, maybe a bad deal for us.
Well, they also run treasury bonds, so treasury bonds are another example of something kind of like a forever stamp. Uh, you got a limited time window and Uncle Sam says, you know, I'll gladly pay you back for a Hamburger on Wednesday if you give me the money for it on Monday.
I've heard that they're a pretty good investment right now.
They were they were for sure for a minute. Well, okay, god, yeah, true though true though they're in trouble. But in theory it makes sense for the Treasury to do this sort of stuff. They're the money guys, the money boffins. They also supervised national banks, and a lot of the agencies you hear about in the United States are under the Treasury Department. The greatest hits like the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the blas Q, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Trade Bureau.
The US meant and of course are good friends at the IRS, see you guys in April.
So there's an Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. But also what is it alcohol, tobacco and firearms?
Is that? Are they related? No?
No, that one is for taxing and the other one is for getting you.
Yeah, the other one's forgetting you and these guys. This is a common misconception everything we're describing. As far as the US Treasury goes. It is not the Federal Reserve. That is a different branch of bureaucracy and conspiracy. They do hang out, though they kick it pretty hard.
And the Reserve are the ones of the officials there who adjust interest rates and things like that, right, and make vague speeches about that make it easy. They can also instantly affect the markets just by talking about your set, just by a whiff of a change.
Coming go back and watch our videos on the Federal Reserve, and I believe we've.
Covered it in a full episode at least once.
That's no, it was about the National Bank, wasn't it.
And we did.
We definitely did a live show about the establishment of the National Bank.
Look, as long as these folks keep doing shenanigans, it is our remit to cover those shenanigans.
Yes, so I believe it's the creature from Jekyl Island. Yes, a good search term if you wish to go down that rabbit hole.
Shout out to nineteen thirteen. Uh so in short for well over two centuries now, which is, you know, a big amount of time for the US. The Treasury has been the main institution for Uncle Sam's money. Big big tip of the tricorn hat to Alexander Hamillon, most famous now for a musical based on loosely on his life, but before that he was he was one of the big financial movers of the Founding Fathers.
Yeah, it is that situation. If you are going to fight a major war, you have to get funding, and all of this is I mean, this isn't directly tied back to the funding that those revolutionary fellows secured in order to fight back against the British, but it is an interesting.
Yeah, yeah, it isn't.
Let's say, it's a it's a curious thread to follow, just the funding, the outside funding that comes into a country as it's attempting to fight some major war.
Yeah, and then the funding that the or the debt that the individual states racked up. And without getting two into the weeds. That was one of the things that Hamilton went ten toes down on, you know, was saying that the federal government, if a United States exist as an entity, then at some point it has to bear the costs that say, your Virginia's or your Delawar's rack up.
I guess what I get kind of my mind blown about when we're talking about the reality of money or like the value of money or money as a religion. Like you were saying, Ben, is the amount of debt that countries carry and like, at what point does that become a real thing. A note that is called in
and which never seems to really happen. It all just seems kind of like soft diplomacy and threats to like have countries kind of do what you want, but the money never really changes hands or the debts are never really repaid. I don't know.
It's wild to me in my mind the way it functions, and I may be way off base here, but as long as everybody is paying their debts, you know, those little payments, right, the interest in all that stuff. As long as everybody is paying everybody else, then money continues to flow, and everybody can kind of do their thing that they want to do. And people who are getting paid most by others who owe them, right, they can do the most things that they want to do. It.
Yeah, yes, it does, and I think that's well put. They can Also, those people are entities and power. They can wield great influence beyond just a spreadsheet. And that's where that's where we get to some of the big
controversies of the Treasury Department. Given given its position, it's its high functionality, right, and given the length of time this institution has existed, it's not a surprise that they have, you know, stepped a little off the hedge path or the hedgerow every so often, and uh two, great consequence and a great detriment to the average person. But again, the average person, and I want to be very honest here,
is not involved in these conversations. You can vote all the live long day, but you do not have direct influence on the US Treasury. It's sort of like if you're a second grader, you don't get to determine who becomes principal next year.
Yeah, you got to pay extra for that.
Now.
Two, you can vote for the people or person who has the people around them who will appoint the person.
You can vote for a person who will tell you, if you catch them on a good day, that they will do what you believe will make the United States better. Yes, spoiler, they're probably not going to call you every three PM.
Are not going to check in and check in.
You have to get above a certain threshold. I mean, there's no arguing this though. It's It's like so many other The US Treasury is a fundamental part of the United States. Whatever kind of treasury or financial overseer system exists in any nation, it is a fundamental piece of the overall organism in the US. All of the institutions we have are both imperfect and necessary. And it's funny we talk about this all the time. All sorts of people have all kinds of ideas about how to improve
the treasury. You ask people, especially in DC, and you're going to encounter some pretty hard sell pitches, and you'll encounter people who are not even being insincere, they're being quite genuine when they say, we know how to fix this, right, here's what you do step A through Z. But the issue is these ideas are often contradictory. There are ulterior motives at play. If you took everybody's ideas, you put them all together and rolled them out at once, the
immediate result would be chaos. And that's why the US overall, especially in the world of finance, it has a surprisingly like ad hoc patch together sort of jazz approach to infrastructure.
The only thing everybody agrees on is more military spending.
Yeah. The people who are allowed to speak in Congress the one thing they agree on.
Yeah, it's just some people say more military spending and others say more.
Military spending, and then another guy goes, I completely disagree. What we need to do is spend more on the military. Also, well said sir, Yeah, it's crucial to remember when we talk about the US Treasury in particular, this money makes you, makes you powerful. It also makes you a target for high level espionage and high level politicians. Domestically, this is
a golden goose. This single entity has vast influence over the way US money moves, which means it has vast influence over the way money moves throughout the world.
And I mean, if there's one thing that I think we've learned from the Doge situation, whatever you think about what they're ultimately doing, is that a lot of these systems are pretty antiquated and potentially vulnerable to this kind of thing.
Yeah, and also remember just the number of government grants, the number of payments that the US government makes. When a deal is made, especially with a foreign entity, with either a corporation and a state, anything like that, there are usually press releases or you know, some big announcement in the press when money is moving, especially across borders
of the United States to another country. But the specifics of anything to do with that, you know, the drilled down specifics of where that money is moving, is often not discussed. That is like highly controlled information by design.
Yeah, it has to. It's opseche at that point like, that's I love that point because that gets us to I would say one of the axioms that is fundamental to this episode. At least in my opinion, it's not so much what the money is or what the money does. I think it's more what kind of tea leaves you can read, what sort of actions one can predict and then if necessary prevent right. It gives you a little
heads up, a little bit of prognostication ability. And that's why that's why we see the real danger of compromising the US Treasury Department. It has a wait for it, treasure trove. Thank you, Dylan, I appreciate the drummer. If they're of data, yes, a wealth of knowledge, wealth of knowledge that could, if compromised, easily make things go south in a serious way. As we record this evening, folks, true story don't be full. Twenty four was just a
few months ago, not too long ago. The US Treasury got hacked hard, arguably twice.
You'll one two punch.
Yep, and then we're gonna tell you all about that hard hacking.
Right after this hard hack's.
Gonna come, y'all.
Here's where it gets crazy. All right, let's be honest. All right, we're talking about like the first hack? What was the real first hack? For decades, we talked like even before we started doing this strange show, the United States has repeatedly, often consistently accused rival powers, especially our pals in China and in Russia, of trying to hack into their stuff.
Yep, and lest we forget North Korea, we've heard that many a time.
And you know, there's a certain amount of kind of chef's chest puffing, you know, saber rattling here when it comes to politicians trying to seem like they're kind of keyed into what's going on, trying to earn points with their constituency or with other politicians. But it is important to realize that this stuff isn't coming from thin air at all. This is a very real threat and has been for a very long time.
Yeah, I love that, because, look, folks, we know politics can be sensitive, as as can any other sort of religious ideology. But this is not an episode about politics. This is an episode about espionage. This is an episode about trade craft, and it's one that we all need to be aware of, right, And this is where we go to journalists like David D. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes, Singer is going to show up a couple of times because he just did some kick ass work for the
New York Times. He's going to show up a couple of New York Times in tonight's episode. In November of twenty twenty four, Singer and Barnes described the mission creep of Chinese espionage in specific applied to the United States.
The quote is, at first, the biggest worry was the theft of intellectual property such as chip designs and plans for military equipment. Yummy, And just coming out of the quote, we've talked about that many times.
What do they call it? Corporate espionage or industrial espionage? And that's it. Hey, hang it out. We just can't hang it out.
Well.
I think I mentioned like the synthesizer that I have, there's these chips inside of it that are when they were made, they had a defect basically because they were covered with this like polyurethane material and it was literally a process that made the chips more vulnerable to moisture and stuff, but was designed to protect against people being able to scope out what the chip design looked like. You know, and take a photo of it from the factory floor or whatever to prevent industrial espionage.
Oh yeah, so chis chips are one thing. Some things like nuclear power generation way back in the day. All kinds of things like that were just new technologies, right, were always and have always been ripe fruit to be picked from anybody who was good at this type of espionage propriety stuff. Yes, so let's jump back to the quote. We're talking about military equipment, chip designs, intellectual property quote.
Those included the F thirty five, America's most advanced fighter jet, whose blueprints China stole from American military contractors.
True story. Oh dear.
Then during the Bush and Obama administrations, China's focus turned to understanding American government officials, including the theft of the security clearance files of more than twenty two million Americans.
WHOA, this was not ideal. Just by the way, I'm being very bep or Dylan, I am being extremely fucking diplomatic, And everybody who heard that line, well, please please please.
I believe it. It was not ideal.
Recognize the diplomacy there, because now we're getting past like, okay, for anybody who's ever been in a weird personal relationship, sometimes somewhat toxic or somewhat just curious. Cats will will do deep internet you know, searching. We'll we'll joke and call it internet stalking on other people to figure out what their aims are, what their providence is, what their
mission is. China now is doing this on a macro level, as a a with all the powers of one of the most important nations and one of the most dangerous nations on the planet. They might be looking at you and saying like, oh, what did you what did you do Tuesday?
Yeah, and these are in individuals with security clearance, which means they have access to those files that not all of us have access to.
And then extrapolate that toward the larger web, right leveraging five eyes, which is clearly compromised at this point. And then you can now construct a model or a decision tree where you say something like, Hey, I'm thinking of
an innocuous name. Hey, Tiffany, Tiffany Blue Jens or whatever has a security clearance, right, and we know she hangs out here, and she knows she has an interest in this thing, and so maybe we can have a accidental meeting where a conversation ensues and we can learn a little bit.
More or even potentially compromise somebody like that.
Right, Well, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
But I mean, like compromisation, well not not just eavesdropping or like you know, probing for information, but even making them an asset POTENTI ting.
Yeah, yeah, that's where.
Yeah, and when you have twenty two million of them, you can maybe see somebody who's like third down the line of who's gonna get notified when action X occurs?
Right, feeling a little.
Underappreciated, maybe you know, yeah, yeah.
Leverage the weaknesses, right, find the gaps in the armor. So we already see like that excellent quote describes, we see an expansion of scope mission creep, earlier hacks, earlier compromise attempts, espionage, tradecraft attempts, relatively constrained. Let me get the blueprints, let me get out. Let me see if I can leave a proverbial window open so I can break in later. Uh. And just side note, that's a reference to typical B and E strategy for anybody who
knows what they're doing. You break into a house or a structure the first time. What you want to do is leave some sort of just unlatch a window or something and hope no one notices it, because it makes it easier for you to do a second round of crimes. Also, we don't do that.
Well, especially when you're talking about doing some kind of espionage through a computer interface, right or through a network Leaving, leaving an escape patch open is a little easier than you know, physically unlatching a window when there's a big investigation or something, right like, sometimes not always, but it is. It is definitely the strategy.
As you said, Ben, what we're saying is everybody go check your windows right now, especially ones you don't check often. Yes, those those are the ones. And that that applies to security online and electronic infrastructure as well. So the next question is like, what how do we make this bigger? Right? Hackers are asking and they're saying, if we steal access to one thing, why don't we leverage that to gain
access to some other thing or place like? Ultimately, you don't want to steal just the key to the front door. You want to steal the key to the room where someone makes all the other keys.
If it's a give a man a fist, teach a man to fish kind of scenario.
Which is an example that comes up later. Yes, absolutely so.
I wonder if it's weird. I feel like the treasurery Department might be the biggest get you can almost imagine.
One of for sure, as especially as far as world powers go, these like we were saying, these attacks are occurring. They are occurring much more often than the average member of the public might assume, especially if you remember the public in China, because as we'll see later, they disagree with some of the allegations of conspiracy that we're going
to explore. But we will tell you things that the United States and the world at large, other than the PRC, the People's Republic of China consider proven right now, and you don't have to look far. Let's just like start with July of twenty twenty four, not too long ago. We were all, I guess, easy breezy summer girls or whatever, and then China, China broke into everybody's phones.
Yeah, PRC sponsored hackers broke into at least nine separate telecom systems.
And you know, this is also one of those things too where we.
Say PRC sponsored, but there is still kind of plausible deniability from the government. Right, it's like we didn't, you know, hire these people. They were acting on their own.
Isn't that correct? Yeah, hacking for hire. It's it's a thing we'll get into later as well. And I think that's excellent foreshadowing. There's a degree of a hidden hand, right, plausible deniability, we would call it in the US when we do it, because spoiler, we super do that, oh all the time.
Well, in the hacker group that we're talking about here for hire. Otherwise they're got to really sick.
Name if you ask me, salt typhoon.
Yeah, it's pretty cool, but is it salt typhoon food? Wow?
Yeah, they did not they do not call themselves that. They were known as APT twenty seven h Advanced Persistent Threat twenty seven, and then Microsoft called them salt typhoon.
Okay, well, good on you, Microsoft. That's a pretty sick nickname. It's like the way the press sort of like nicknames a serial killer or something.
That's interesting.
Yeah, and now the reported purpose of this hack was specifically to spy on US government officials, including then I believe it was Donald Trump as he's running.
For president for a president elect.
Yeah, yes, And there was like other just high level government officials that they wanted to just literally see what they're doing on their.
Phones, compromise cabinet level stuff, and then the unelected bureaucrats that can make some power powerful decisions with global consequence. There have been other breaches and breach attempts by this group back before Microsoft called them Salt Typhoon, and they were against public entities as well as private big enough companies, especially in the defense industry, especially in certain I will
say biomedicine applications. Right, So they're touching universities, they're touching healthcare, they're touching the right kind of grants, and they're doing human int as well, so they're human intelligence. So they're also you know, they found out what Miss Blue Jeans is doing later and they sent someone to have a chat. I wonder if they found the cloning facilities. They found
a clone of the cloning facilities. An instance, an instance, an iteration thereof this telecom breach that Noel's mentioning there is astonishing because it teaches the the hackers, the aggressors, more about the structure than it does about the specific heistore monitoring observation attempt. At this point, they're not trying to shake the waters. They're trying to get their ears and eyes inside of people's activities and people's minds and motivations.
But then they find a lot more about the structure and they say, holy spokes, this thing is terrible. This is like a roller coaster built in the nineteen fifties. How has someone not beaaten us to this yet?
They're like casing the joint at this point, you know, checking for those unlatched windows that you were talking.
About, well, yeah, and figuring out the web of who to target when.
And for what. Yeah, they get access to not just text communicate but also phone conversations, and they get real close to being able to do it in real time.
And that would be a great way to gather that kind of compromand on these individuals. Not only are you learning potentially actionable intelligence items, but you might find someone doing something they're not supposed to, that's in a position that you might want to take advantage of, and then you've got everything you need to flip them.
Check out our earlier episodes, because look, we're not spilling beans outside of the barrel here. This is known tactics, and they are deployed by all high level world powers. So initially the Biden administration. This happened while Joe Biden
was the President of the US. The Biden administration acknowledged this hack from July twenty twenty four, but members of Congress, members of Joe Biden's own ostensible political party, they came forward pretty soon after and they said, look, you guys are making this sound like it's not a big deal, and it is a huge deal.
Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I mean, I remember that pr kind of line that they pushed out, and maybe just because I wanted to be blissfully ignorant to it, I sort of was like, Okay, it's probably fine. I'm sure a lot of people did the same thing, which was.
I don't want to spoil the lead here. We were pretty straightforward and saying the Treasury Department got hacked hard. But if you read the official, you know, statements, it was it's not a big deal.
We'll talk about that. But that was that was definitely the.
Forward facing message, not a big deal, tiny, tiny, little breach.
Yeah, yeah, you know, everybody sometimes pushes a fart too hard you and can get a little juice in your paper. Oh my god, that's what they were saying. They had a little juice. That's what they were saying. That was actually in the official release.
Yes, language they chose to go with.
Yeah, but we do have we do have a let's say, a sentiment from Senator Mark Warner of Virginia about this specific hack under the Biden administration when they were in charge, and he at the time was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Uh, he was pretty messed up about it, like he thought, this is way worse than we're all saying out loud.
Yeah, he said he was stunned by the scope and depth of the breach. And again, look, politics aside, this guy is also a Democrat. For anybody outside of the US, Joe Biden was and I assume is a Democrat. So these guys are on the same, you know, political team. And this dude, Senator Warter is saying, no, it's not just some juice. These attacks are going to lead to more attacks unless there is a serious inventory of our
security on the US side. And being from Virginia and being a politician, just to be fair, obviously he's going to lean into like folksy idioms because he wants to get re elected, so he says, the bound door is still wide open, mostly open.
Is this not part of the mandate or mission of the whole elon musk Doge crew like to prevent stuff like I mean again, whatever they're actually up to to prevent stuff like that is to tighten up security on these antiquated computer systems.
Unfortunately, No, they're I think they'd be a good.
Selling point though, you know, like, how are they going to help us?
Now?
Their thing is to help the America. Their stated purpose is to help the American public by eliminate wasteful government spending and fraud.
Well, yeah, and remember these are these are private telecoms that were targeted in this specific instance, right, So that is not government at all, that's.
True, but it was it did have tendrils that reached into government, which is what we're going to get further.
Into long lines. Building. Yes, love it, love it. Imagine a skyscraper with no windows. If you live in Manhattan, boy, do we have news for you. Also, by the way, this is how unprepared Uncle Sam was. The federal government, the folks who run the world's most dangerous military still in all of known existence, technically, they did not discover this on their own. They were too big. They were like a They were like a blue whale that didn't know it had some parasites on its tail. They instead
got word about this from Microsoft Private Company. Their cybersec team discovered the first hack, the telecom hack. Right. We say first, because that's the one they discovered first, and they're the ones who gave us that sick name salt Typhoon. Again, it does sound like one of those giant robots, a Jaeger from Pacific rim. Well done, fellow nerds. The US government, even after they knew they were trying to picture the whale trying to turn around and look at its own tail,
they still didn't understand the following things. They're really dangerous. First, they didn't understand how China was able to obtain this information in the first place. Second, they didn't understand how this breach allowed them to target and monitor conversations with those high value targets. And then they also didn't understand the full ways in which this had implications for the future.
Yeah, oh yeah. And they didn't know the specifics of what was taken. They just knew it had been happening for a certain amount of time. So you then have to just assume that anything and everything that was discussed by everybody, every one like seriously, was just swept up.
M Yeah. They initially they say, okay, these hackers used stolen passwords, honestly, very easy. We don't say this with any like great pride, and we're not trying to be a dix about it. But a lot of people used really dumb passwords like one, two, three, four, five, you know, in their government jobs. And then they focused on these systems that would function under stuff like the FISA court. Right, you know, get get the warrant such that you are
legally allowed to monitor phone calls text. But it looks like as soon as to your point about observation, as soon as they realized that they have been discovered, the Salt Typhoon and co. Retreated right they left the house, They left some windows unlocked, they suspended their activities because if they're not observed, that means it is incredibly difficult to gauge the amounts of damage done, to know what
they touched. To keep with our like B and E comparison, I would say think of it as hearing the sirens in the distance while you're still inside the house and having enough time to wipe down as much stuff as possible. You remove your fingerprints or shredding the.
Docks, putting them drills through your hard drives.
Oh yeah, that's a good one.
That's a good one. Yeah, that's an old favorite of us. It's stuff they'll watch you to know it. Brought to you by Big Drill.
But now we sit as we record on March seventh of twenty twenty five, and a little bit more information has come out about what really went down during these hacks. We're going to tell you all about that right after we take a quick word from our sponsor.
We've returned fast forward December four, just a few months ago, as weird as that is to say, because a lot has happened. We are to your point, Noel, starting to learn more about what transpired. Somehow, we're still officially not sure how. The hackers of Salt Typhoon they snagged a nearly comprehensive list of phone numbers that DOJ has actively wire tapped, which means, for the purposes of the PRC, they got a list of like eighty to ninety percent
of every individual the DOJ thinks might be spying. Wow again not ideal, Yeah, or a.
Part of some criminal syndicate, right, that's moving money or functioning through investments through a series of front companies or something like that. I mean we're talking. So basically, they they figured out who we think the bad guys are. So now they know which bad guys that they might be associated with are under investigation. Which you've seen movies, you've seen TV shows. Once you know you're under investigation, the whole game changes.
Yeah, your behaviors change, right, and you can again decision tree people toward actions that are preferable to use. So we saw then diagram. Right, China has a list of assets. And to be completely fair and to exercise empathy, it is known that quite a few people who are functioning as Chinese assets abroad are not doing so of their own free will. They are being coerced with threats to their family and intimidation and extortion, you know, all the hits. And again the US does this too. I hate to
say it, but it's true. So you nailed it, Matt. One of the logical primary goals of attaining this list is not to immediately people, right, the Chinese boffins don't love a third story window as much as our friends in Russia, but they do want that information. And perhaps the most important thing is when you're able to compare those two lists, right, the one we have, the one China has, or the one the US has and one we have, you can find the coolest part the real
umami who do we know works for us? That has yet to be clocked? Right? Where is the gap? But where's the missing piece, the blind spot?
And let's find a way to get them in on the investigation.
Let's have the me Lo Jens lady. Right, Yeah, and maybe they can you know, maybe they can get at the right conference, maybe they can get assigned to the right project.
Because it's not get them elected to some official office.
Yeah yeah, it's never looks by movies always want you to think it's a big push. It's hardly ever a big push. It's a series of little nudges. Right. You seek to erode people, You seek to normalize very not normal stuff over time, and do it in such a way that you can never be held responsible and always at the worst say oh, I'm surprised as you are. You know, I thought everybody was being cool. Why are you not being cool about this? Yikes, yikes, big ikes.
But fortunately we do have some announcements, you know, they come to us from the Treasury and the DOJ. Whatever. These hackers, it appears they didn't compromise just these high value targets. They also compromised more than one hundred US organizations, private and public. The Treasury went forward to the masses at the end of the Biden administration when there was a lot of other stuff going on, and they said, look,
here's what happened. These hackers that we think are definitely based in China and definitely working for China in some capacity. To your point, nol, we think that they gained access to our employees workstations aka computers, database, and at the very least they got some documents. And someone said what kind of documents did they get? And the Treasury said, no, further, we're not taking questions. Yep, yep.
You may remember this. We talked about it close to around the time. I think we mentioned it in Strange News in December at some point twenty twenty four, because it was pretty shocking. So in a statement that the Department of Treasury made, they said that on December eighth, they were made known that there was some kind of hack that occurred via a third party software service they use called Beyond.
Trust all one word. Yep.
This is a This is a company that provides things like remote access for governmental employees there at the Department of Treasury, and Beyond Trust said some hacker group hackers gained access by obtaining a security key, and then they used that to get into specific not even not very many individuals, machines and materials, but they used that single security key to make it seem like they were trustworthy and were able to remotely access essentially desktops slash laptops.
And in doing so perhaps make more keys. For about seventy two hours at least, as far as we understand, Beyond Trust was able to monitor these activities. During that time. They saw these operators create accounts, change passwords, change your passwords. Make sense. Of course you would do that, but it heightens your risk of being apprehended. Right, So ideally what you want to do is create a new account that
you control, right and make it look native. Right, throw some wool over your wolf and have it run with the sheep. Yep, but hey, this should be known.
According to the official statements at that time, the Department of Treasury said, Hey, the only things that were taken were unclassified files.
Oh tight, they are unclassified guys. Oh they broke into my house, but don't worry. They just stole the trash.
Yeah, but you can find a lot of interesting stuff digging around in people's trash now, uh.
Well, put yeah they did. They also I love the point they did not specify the nature of these unclassified troves of information. They didn't say what kind of files were taken. They didn't say when or for how long the hack took place other than that seventy two hour monitoring window. They also didn't say how confidential or how you know, protected these systems are supposed to be. They also pulled like they also gathered ranks, and they didn't
say how senior the staff was. And that last part is super important, you know what I mean.
Yeah, seems like it probably wasn't the interns.
Doesn't feel like the interns. Just to be honest, it does not feel like it was the person in charge of scheduling, you know, the in office birthday party.
Ooh, but you know an assistant that's oh gosh, that's an assistance.
Is what you go for you never go, don't go. I mean going for the top, folks is five. It works in fiction, it's fun like Tinker Tailor's Soldier, Spy or whatever. But really what you want is the boring people. You want the people a couple steps down, you know what I mean, Maybe not the person who does the birthday parties, but the person who asked to know enough about what's being discussed in a meeting to figure out who goes into that meeting. Yep, the scheduler. We're putting
you on game, folks. We do know there was a pickle here, a bag of badgers. Because investigators private and public, like from beyond trust and from the US, they were baffled. Whomever was doing this did not seem to be despite accessing the Treasury Department, they did not seem to be directly attempting to steal money. Again, they broke into a house with a lot of valuables. They did not take super immediately valuable stuff. That made a lot of folks
assume this was straight up espionage. You know what I mean, it's it's uh, what does our friend Heath Ledger say, It's not about money. It's about sending a message something like that.
I think that's right, Yeah, as the joker character.
Yeah, all right, all right, speaking about bringing into a place with the valuables. Did you see there's a recent statement from Oh I can't remember if it was directly from Elon Musk or Donald Trump, but it was something about it was questioning whether or not Fork Knox actually has gold in it still.
Yeah, Oh, that's the big thing that does is talking about Right, they're going to do a big reveal like that Heraldo thing with the faults and it was just like a candy wrapper was in there or something. Wouldn't that be funny though, because I actually wanted to bring this up at the top of the show when we were talking about the nature of debt and the value of money and stuff like we're not on a gold standard anymore, but still matters that there's tons of gold. The idea of it matters.
Yeah, because it's a tangible representation of value. That's the only reason, like, the only reason people got into gold in the beginning was because it's ductile. I think we talked about this.
In an earlier pound in or stretch it into.
Yeah, yeah, you can you can make a little necklace and tell people, you know that you're better than that.
But like to the point of like confidence or whatever, and like manipulating the markets and like, you know, people saying stuff could be enough to change the wins of finance. Like if what if we were to discover that Fort Knox was a ruse and there was nothing in there?
Would it like that we would immediately republish our episode from years ago. Well we asked this question, and obviously Doge listens to this show, Well, that's what I was gonna say.
The conspiracy theorists are at the helm now, which is so much was just so fun.
Yeah, it's true and there are and part of the reason that exists is because there is a lack of transparency, you know what I mean. It would have been just objectively, it would have been easy on an operational level for some sanctioned government department to say, hey, we're going to have a you know, a quick little documentary and we're going to walk you around four knocks and stuff like
that happened in the past. But then people began to question the sources, and that was aided and embedded by asymmetric foreign info war attempts, right, not an Alex Jones thing, the actual way of warging, Yes, waging war through information.
Let's undermine people's belief in the power of the United States by saying things like there's no gold in fork knocks.
And if you undermine the belief in an institution, then that also puts the institution itself a tremendous disadvantage. Right. It puts it on its back its back heels. I guess all heels are back heels, but you know it puts it puts you on your back foot because then you have to respond to allegations and you're just losing more more time during that great gish gallop.
Oh, I like that gish gallop. I like that a lot. I don't even know what that is.
Gish gallop is where you kind of just freestyle a bunch of nonsense and maybe one out of ten things is true, but you just level a bunch of a bunch of statements or accusations that the receiver rival party tries to answer in an orderly fashion, and then you just keep going and you don't listen to them.
Yeah, oh god, that sounds familiar.
Hm, it's sure, it sure does it? Sure does. You could say there were several debates about it not too long ago. So look, that's the thing, though, are they if they're not automatically stealing money? Right, if they're not automatically moving funds, then what are they doing? Why? We already know China's top intelligence and security boffins, good luck to you guys. They have a deep interest in the Treasury because it oversees all those financial systems. It implements
sanctions importantly. So if you can get into the Treasury and you can see what the Treasury is prioritizing, it's very close to a limited form of telepathy regarding the United States overall. Now we can predict priorities, and perhaps if we play our cards right, we can take action to prevent upcoming moves. Cough cough Taiwan, cough cough you okay, bless you.
I have blessed people when they cough. If people think.
It's weird, aya at you, fellongong sneeze one more time. It's great. That's real. I'm telling you, we're saying it. I mean, this is what we can say for sure. The next few months are going to be a wild ride. That's the only thing the public knows. It's an ongoing story. Like we kept saying, we can give you a few additional updates, which happened. Get this, folks, just a few days before we came to record here with you tonight
on March seventh. On Thursday and Wednesday of this week, we got some full criminal charges against twelve Chinese nationals who are currently not apprehended today. But hey, bounty hunter style, if you can get one and you survive, the US government may give you as much as ten million dollars asterisk sick. Well, it's minus taxes. It's after a conviction. That's okay, and take a while.
I'm cool with that.
What did they say when they just released these statements hunting these dirty dozen individuals?
They said that there were twelve individuals that attacked over one hundred different organizations and it was actually a strategy that went back as far as twenty thirteen. So this, oh, you just imagine, you imagine a group that's just kind of been waiting to implement the right attacks at the right time.
Yeah, and this was one of the big ones.
Do in that recon lay in the groundwork all those many years.
But well, the big question then, is was this attack just another little stepping stone in whatever the big operation is.
Yeah, and if so, what is it? Right? That's the trillion dollar question. The DOJ Department of Justice here in the US says, all right, look, maybe some of these twelve people, maybe they were acting on their own. Yeah, maybe they said, we can prove that. I think about eight of them were ordered to do this by entities of the Chinese government, the Ministry of Public Security or
MPs and the Ministry of State Security MSS. And two of the people that they specifically name in these accusations are employees, like direct high ranking employees of these ministries. But to your point, Noel, there is, as we talked about in previous episodes on the fifty cent Army or whatever, the nation of China has a complex and very clever approach to denying state involvement in these operations through the
use of proxy, ostensibly private industries. And we have to be really careful when we talk about this because a lot of politicians use it to sound or to propagate very racist statements and to make people like hate more than a billion other folks just because they appen to live in China. This is why we have to acknowledge the United States does the exact same thing pretty often. Check out Blackrocks recent exciting purchases of two ports in
Panama private industry. That's a good idea. Just happens to be two of the ports that the US is currently beefing with Panama about.
Hmmm when private, Yeah, I wonder kind of art they keep in those points?
Only the best, straight up, only original drawings of Dick butt.
Oh god, do you guys remember dick But.
That's the real takeaway from this episode. That's what That's what these hackers are looking for, the original drawing of dick But be amazing of those, the whole thing. It's the only thing in Fort Knox. There's no gold. There's one framed drawing of dick butt. Yep. Yeah, it's.
Just on a scrap on a napkin, on the back of a piece of trash, just a sketch of dick butt.
And it's not handwritten. It's dick written exactly. Oh wow, yeah, dare to dream? Right, So how does this work? Though? We This is where we learn about an ostensibly private Chinese company called Eye Dash Soon I soon hopefully no relation to iHeart one would hope, one hopes. So what do we what do we know about IOO?
Well, they can compromise Gmail and Microsoft Outlook in boxes. They can also easily compromise x slash Twitter. Uh why would they do that? Well, who knows to what ends?
Shadow? The shadow shadows. Yeah.
Well, one of the reasons you might do this is to monitor the opinions that are not stated publicly that high level officials might have, right, the discussions that are had between you know, high level individuals that are never stated out loud.
Yeah. Like, imagine if you are working in a social dynamic and you wonder what other people in that dynamic might think of you, and you think, or they send them messages about me on the side, what do they say? If so, that's kind of what the Chinese government is accused of looking for through Silk Typhoon and AP twenty seven. Silk Typhoon, by the way, I canmemer if we mentioned this.
It's different from another hacker group called Vault Typhoon. Vault Typhoon seeks to compromise US infrastructure.
Do you think Salt Typhoon and Vault who would win in a fight between Salt Typhoon and.
Vault Typhoon, you know, and Silk Typhoon.
Oh fair, yeah, yes, I'm talking about it if they were the Jaegers, the Mechs, you know, Evangelians.
It's a good question. I don't know. Sorry, no it's not. There are no dumb questions unless you think you have one. For us, prove us wrong in this assumption conspiracydiheartradio dot com. Think about silk Iphoon is that they have a jacket, they have a track record. They've been continually accused of being behind hacks of universities. Also easy to do that.
Healthcare systems also easy to do that. And the DOJ says this company I Soon, which is functioning as sort of a face for dirty things from the Chinese government. They say these guys were essentially given bounties so they would take this data and then they would sell it to folks associated with the Chinese government or certain agencies. A hacker for higher system. And that's brilliant because you know, if you're you know, Uncle Ji, and you get caught,
you can say, oh my god, what the heck? You guys, we're just as surprised as you. We're all trying to find the guy who did this, you say, her hot dog costume.
But let's make something really clear here, because I got a little confused even looking through my research. Here, Salt Typhoon is the group thought to be responsible for the communications intrusion. Silk Typhoon is the group thought to be responsible for the Treasury infiltration via what is the name of the thing beyond trust?
Yeah, taking that API security key via beyond Trust. And then volt Typhoon is possible attacks on US infrastructure, power stations, stuff like that. So it's a multi pronged defense. We can also say the legal defense, the oh my gosh, I'm just another guy happening to wear a hot dog costume in the store. That gets pretty flimsy. If you can prove that I soon did attempt to sell stolen data on US nationals right to China. For I think
it was not a bad price overall. In the Great Game, It's like they were trying to sell something like ten thousand to seventy five thousand US dollars per each email inbox, so not per message. You kind of get a price break, you know, Oh yeah, oh yeah, I feel like now I'm selling US compromised email inboxes.
That should be a side hustleld.
We live in a gig economy, do we not? So dude? Oh sorry, no, you got it. You got it, guys.
There's this other thing that I just wanted to throw into here that was it was at least reported on in January of this year about silk typhoons infiltration and how they were potentially looking at foreign investments like companies that assess security risks for foreign investments within the United States.
And I don't even.
If you guys remember we talked about there was a Chinese investment group underneath a bunch of shell corporations that was trying to buy huge swaths of land that were It's not the one in California we talked about. It was right near specific base like military base, but other parts that were close to critical infrastructure in the United States.
And it ended up getting.
Blocked because it was found that it was a Chinese investment that came under scrutiny and then they stopped it. But then you've got these guys in December looking at the foreign investment offices within the Department of Treasury. So it does make you wonder like what in the end or is it a strategy to find the loopholes and the weak points to be able to purchase large swaths of land for specific purposes?
Partially guess, to be quite honest with you, that that is part of the rubric right, part of the tactic applied. The easier way to do it, obviously, is to go through a sovereign wealth fund. Shout out to Aaron Aronson. Go through as many proxies as you can, maybe find an individual who is already US national and work through them by hook or by crook, by carrot or by stick. This is yeah, this is tricky stuff and maybe one
of the no maybe's. One of the most worrying factors here is all the all the hard leg work of these investigations show us that I Soon, that company, private company isn't just selling individual espionage fish via inboxes. Instead, the company is offering to teach direct employees, official employees of the PRC, to become fishermen in their own right. Their training employees on how to hack independently of I soon,
and perhaps providing a suite of software tools. And then they are also you know, just give me the day one hacking methods like this is hey, go here. The password is one, two, three, four five. Uh. Yeah, it's happening. And we're talking about more than like Treasury Department made the news, but we're also talking technology companies, think tanks, law firms, defence contractors, your local government, check in on your comptroller. It's just a reason for us to say
the word comptroller again. It's I wish it was a different job. It sounds way cooler than it is. There's a comptroller against just it's an accountant.
Right, it's like a treasurer almost. Yeah, oh, even better, I think, Well, I mean insane potato potata. Oh, also religious organizations and private info of journalists, right, even yes, folks, even the journalist you don't like.
They want to know all of it. And none of the defendants, no, those twelve people named, none of that dirty dozen are currently in US. So at this point, before we end, I think it's we have to do it. I feel we are ethically required to. What is the official response of China to like overall and specifically.
Well, I'll tell you one.
I'll tell you one.
One response that they had very recently, not necessarily about this, but just a response in general. It was published in BBC on March fifth, as we record where China says, quote, it is ready for any type of war with the US, including a trade war or other.
Right, but they never fully copped to doing this though right.
Absolutely to that point denied anything related to yes, because it's private industry, right, Chinese officials may allude to the possibility of, say, a motivated patriot working on their own, you know, vigilante style. In this specific case, we can go to a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, Mao Ning,
who said, look, these allegations by Uncle Sam are groundless. Further, we oppose all forms of hacking attacks, and we're even more opposed to the spread of false information against China for political purposes and true story, representatives of the US Treasury traveled to China to hang out and have like a you know, clear the air discussion what corporate America would call a healthy conversation, because hey, maybe China is telling the truth. Dylan, could you give us a sarcastic
sound cue, just go wild with it perfectly. Wow.
Well, of course all of this occurred before you know, the terriffs financial wars fully began between the United States and China, there's always been tensions and small things happening, but now we're officially embroiled in that, you know, along with Canada and Mexico and a lot of other countries.
And just this concept of China coming out publicly and saying, hey, we're ready for war, and then you think about potentially the actions that were taken, whether on behalf of China as you know, a state or not, if they've got some of that information that makes them prepared to take
strategic actions against the US. It just, especially when it comes to money and trade wars, it does feel like it's one big deck that's getting stacked somehow by people that we just don't know right or who are acting for what purpose besides winning at some point, right, because there's other stuff going on too.
We talked about a.
Sovereign wealth fund would be the way to get through that foreign investment into buying land. The United States just started a foreign a sovereign wealth fund.
The what was it? Donald Trump?
Want something he did in February he froze a law that banned the bribing of foreign officials. YEA, for one hundred and eighty days.
Why would you do that? Yes? And also thanks man, oh yeah, yeah, good job man, get it.
Oh oh well, but just the.
The fact that.
And what was there was sorry, one other thing, and it's I don't mean this in kind of some kind of anti Trump way. I just mean it seems like these things are coming together in a specific fashion to shore up corruption at the highest levels. Because there was another move that was disbanding the Foreign Interference in Elections Group that was.
Investigating that stuff.
Just all it does feel like, I don't know, the intrusion thing is happening deeper than just the Treasury Department.
Absolutely absolutely. And that statement that you alluded to if war is what the US wants, be it a terriforia, trade war or any other type of war, We're ready to fight till the end does come officially from China's embassy, but was published on Twitter. So disappointing that such monumental moves will happen on social media. Those are the times of which we live. We mentioned a second hack at
the top of the show this evening. The second hack that we're referring to might be controversial for some of us in the crowd. It is will give you the quick skinny. It is Doge the so called Department of Government Efficiency Governmental Efficiency Street named DOGE. Get it, it's wordplay. They came under fire for doing a lot of wild
stuff recently. Specifically, an employee for DOGE named Marco Elez had the ability to alter code that controls trillions of dollars worth of federal spending, even though the White House and the US Treasury said he did not have this. They said he had read only access. People looked into that, whether through purposeful prevarication or whether through honest mistakes, that was incorrect. He did have the ability to write an altered code. A few days after these claims, that was rescinded.
Critics are saying that DOGE is un American and is compromising people with due to conflicts of interest. Supporters say, yeah, Elon Musk is unelected, but his organization is uncovering massive amounts of fraud.
I hope that's true. I don't think it's true.
The whole thing feels really weird. It's super weird, you know.
The other thing that the Silk Typhoon folks targeted was the one of the offices that specifically oversees foreign sanctions against Chinese companies, and the US has been making more and more moves sanctioning Chinese private companies for doing stuff that they consider is.
Wrong.
Let's say, sure, so now you get eyes on specifically not only who has already been targeted, but who is potentially going to be targeted.
Right again, the prognostication being able to read the tea leaves to predict and maybe prevent future actions. That's the real Like Ham and the sandwich here, and one thing is for sure. We know we've gone a little bit long on this. One thing is for sure, folks. Anybody you look at in this game, they are holding some of their cards. No one is being fully transparent. China is denying everything. Uncle Sam doesn't want to expose what we call collection means and methods because doing so would
play their hand out in the future. And obviously Doge is launching contradictory statements every other every other Wednesday. So the truth of the matter is this, no matter what your individual perspective is, no matter how we look at it objectively, everybody in this case has some serious stuff they don't want you to know, and we would love to hear from you. We try to be easy to find online, via telephone, via email, thank you so much for joining us this evening. It's right.
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