How Geopolitical Warfare is Blending Kinetic, Social, and Cyber Risks with Ryan McBeth

Welcome to the Cybersecurity Vault. I'm your host, Matthew Rosenquist, CISO, industry cybersecurity strategist and advisor. And today we're going to talk about the impacts and ramifications of evolving geopolitical warfare. And we're going to talk kinetic and social and cyber and bring it all together. So I am absolutely psyched to be talking with Ryan McBeth. Ryan is a recognized intelligence analyst. He is a social media influencer with like over a million followers on his YouTube account. He's a technologist and an author who is well known for his global military insights on his YouTube channel and has earned again over a million followers, uh, for all of his content, which is great. Everybody has to go out and follow him. So welcome, Ryan. Thank you for coming and talking with us.

Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I really appreciate it. You mind if I smoke?

Not at all. By all means. So, you know, Ryan, you cover a lot of kinetic warfare and traditional military intelligence topics, and cyber has kind of become a form of asymmetric warfare for aggressive governments to advance their foreign policy objectives. How are you seeing cyber and cybersecurity in general evolve from an intelligence analyst perspective?

Well, it's not just asymmetric. I mean, I suppose it's traditionally thought of as asymmetric warfare, you know, because it allows a smaller nation to hit above its weight. But it's actually rapidly becoming a part of joint all-domain warfare. When you use a cyber attack to do something like, let's say, cripple the ability for a— to collect tolls at a bridge, or shut down the ability for a bridge to open or close, let's say, you've been able to insert some sort of software onto the actual systems that will open and close the bridge. Well, in a case like that, you might not be able to open the bridge to let a boat pass through, right? So now you've just used a cyber weapon as an honest-to-God weapon because a cyber weapon is an effector, right? And what is a weapon but an effector? Yeah, I've often said, do you buy a drill because you want a drill? Or do you buy a drill because you want a hole, right? Nobody buys a drill because they want to drill. All right, maybe there's some drill collectors out there, but for the most part, you buy a drill because you want a hole, right? So when you look at it from the terms of weapons effectors, why do you buy a weapon? Well, you buy a weapon because of the effects that weapon can create. So let's say you might want to destroy a bridge because destroying that bridge means the enemy's troops can't cross that bridge. Or maybe you— the enemy can't float their boats out of harbor if that bridge can't go up so the boat can go through. So you could destroy the bridge with a missile or a bomb. You might be able to pay some saboteur to damage the mechanism, or you can use cyber warfare to put that bridge in the closed state if you want to prevent boats from leaving, or maybe the open state if you want to prevent troops from crossing that bridge, and the effect is the same. I mean, yeah, the bridge isn't destroyed, but if your effect is designed to prevent troops from going across the bridge or a boat from crossing under it, you just had the same effect as a bomb. So, yeah.

Well, let's dive into that because you had mentioned, right, it's no longer just asymmetric and it allows attacks for against an adversary that you don't share a border with, right? And that's really tough to send troops unless you've got a Navy or an Air Force or something like that for, for troop transport. But you can attack enemies, or perceived enemies, um, with— that you don't share a border with. And not even that, you can attack their allies who may be halfway across the world that are supplying economic or, or food or, or military support or something like that. So I mean, it seems like it's the perfect tool in the toolbox, not the only one, but the perfect tool for kind of the next generation of how do I wanna impact and push foreign agenda, my foreign policy goals for direct adversaries and their friends, supporters, you name it. Do you think this is gonna get worse? I mean, what do you think here?

I mean, you can also have kinetic effects. And one of the examples I give is the MV Cape Orlando. So about 2 years ago, this pro-Hamas group, it was called like Arab Resource Coalition, something like that. They put out information on TikTok and Instagram saying, hey, this American ship that's filled with weapons is leaving the Port of Oakland. And it's headed to Israel. In order to deliver those weapons, we need to block the boat from leaving. So come to this location, protest, and glue yourself to the side of the ship to prevent it from leaving.

Now, useful idiot weapon.

Yes.

Okay.

You know, look, I don't think anybody looked at a map. Because if you were gonna send a boat to Israel, you would probably do it from the Atlantic, not the Pacific, you know, the the, uh, the, the Panama Canal is at record low water, and, um, going around the Pacific all the way to Israel, up the Red Sea— I mean, now you're dealing with the Houthis and all that, so it's easier to go from the east. So I don't think anyone looked at a map. That is why they call them useful idiots, right? But they— this organization was able to physically stop a boat, a naval asset, the, the MV Cape Orlando which is like naval ready reserve ship, from leaving port. You could do that with a mine, you could do that with a missile, but you could also do that with a blue-haired idiot who glues himself to the side of a boat. And, you know, well, I understand their passion, you know, for presenting what they perceive as a, as a genocide. Um, we have to think about these weapons effectors because I guarantee you when the United when, when, when, uh, China invades Taiwan, which will be in 2027, it'll be 2028. Yeah, they will use TikTok to convince people that Taiwan has always been Chinese, uh, America wants you to die for computer chips, uh, this is colonialist, imperialist, whateverist, and college students will eat that up. And hey, go block this army movement. Go block this rail line, prevent this boat from leaving. So yeah, yeah, I could easily see China using that as a weapons effector.

And I see how— I've seen how in the past you've investigated misinformation and disinformation campaigns like this, truly organized campaigns that are reproducing, um, on a certain schedule, uh, exact wordage right, to basically conduct cognitive attacks against, well, those useful idiots, right? Or anybody that'll listen to get them to act on behest of the organization. How do you see those evolving? I know you've been doing that for a couple of years now. Are they getting more sophisticated? Is it, do you think the security technology is catching up? Where are we at with misinformation and disinformation right now?

So the security technology is already there. But the issue is that the social media companies don't want to implement it, right? Um, the fact is that things like lies or misinformation, they generate clicks, and clicks generate eyeballs, eyeballs generate revenue. Look at this horrible thing, click, Wayfair ad, right? Look at this horrible thing, click, Liberty Mutual ad, right? And the fact is that, that social media companies make money when people are viewing content, and the best way to view content is to show people more and more extreme stuff. One of the things that I have suggested, and Twitter just recently implemented, I think about 3 months ago, but it is a checkbox. That is, we can use things like perceptive hashing or Oh my god, I forget the darn name of it. I actually did a whole video about it where you actually— the sine wave of the actual image. I can't remember the darn name of it, but you can determine what images are like other images. So let's say you put a community note on something or you ban something because someone uploaded an image, and I'll give you a good example. About 2 years ago, this person uploaded a picture that had an Israeli girl writing on a shell. And it said, you know, look at how the Israelis feel. A young girl is writing death to Palestine on a shell. And I saw that and I remembered, you know what, that is from 2020, 2006. The last time Israel had a major operation in Gaza, it was Operation Cast Lead, I believe. And that image was controversial back then, but someone was repurposing that image for today. Well, a social media company should be able to identify that. We have pools of images and say, hey, this image was taken back in 2006, so it may not relate to the current conflict. But it spreads and spreads and spreads. It would be trivial to implement this, but the problem is that social media companies would make less money.

Do you think with the advances of AI, we're going to see the attackers kind of leapfrog some of those potential controls? Because you don't have to repurpose something back from 2006, even if it was a stellar hit back then and helped you. You can now generate something even more impactful along the same kind of mental lines.

Yeah.

And you can, you know, do it 50, 100, 1,000 different ways using AI.

I certainly think so. I did a lecture last year in Australia for emergency responders. And one of the things I talked about was that AI is a huge fear because, uh, let's say someone could use AI to show like a school bus going off a ravine, right? So it shows a school bus going off a ravine, and, uh, yeah, and if enough people say, hey, this is real, first responders might be directed toward a place that that doesn't exist or looking for an accident that didn't happen. And meanwhile, other people are dying, right? So using AI-created video to simulate an incident or come up with a, with a false video in order to stoke public opinion or get emergency responders to do something they wouldn't normally do, that is a huge concern. And we are getting to the point where it's going to be very difficult to tell the difference between true and false when it comes to video. I could see a point where video and images are no longer allowed in court.

Right.

Yeah.

It makes sense.

Not a lawyer, but I can see that point. We're rapidly approaching that.

Do you think we're gonna see more false flag operations with the use of generated content, voice, video, images, things of that sort at the nation state level?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you know, if, One of the big issues is that because America has a free society, we have freedom of speech, and even lies are freedom of speech, right? So, kind of the issue here is that how do you balance controlling what foreign governments are putting out there versus an American's right to make up content and lie? I don't know how to square that circle. Unfortunately, I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a politician. I don't know how to do that. I can only talk about my concerns about it.

So if we pull back then, do you think that the manipulation of digital trust, do you think that's being weaponized at— I mean, it's always been weaponized, right? But do you think the pace of that is significantly increasing?

Not right now, mainly because I think it's been staying at a steady rate recently, but I certainly could see it increasing in the event of some sort of conflict. Absolutely.

Well, so let's talk conflicts, right?

Okay.

How are the current geopolitics and hotspots really impacting the weaponization of the internet? And you know, let's, let's be specific on the hotspots. You've got Ukraine, you've got Israel and Gaza, right? You've got the Houthis and you've got some other tensions. You mentioned Taiwan, right? That's— that I also believe is going to be emerging. Do you think that this weaponization, that we need to start being more prepared? And what are you seeing in these hotspots?

Well, typically what you're seeing is you're using Information warfare, again, as a weapons effector. One good example, you take a look at something like Ukraine. You know, if let's say Russia doesn't want the United States sending artillery shells to Ukraine, there's a couple of ways that Russia could prevent that. They could fire a missile at the plant in Scranton, Scranton, Pennsylvania. That's where some of our artillery ammunition is made.

Big plan.

It is, it is within Russia's capability to load some Bear bombers with cruise missiles and fire those missiles.

Really?

Bears?

Bears?

Yeah, bears. Backfires.

Yeah, put a tuple of, you know, 195 or something bears.

You can do that too. But yeah, Russia still has Bears. So you get— I'm just saying, any— they have the platforms to do that. They could fire those missiles at a factory and destroy the factory. That would prevent it. It would also probably invoke Article 5 and the US might be able to respond.

Let's, let's, yeah, read a novel. Okay.

Russia does not want war with NATO. They are terrified of war with NATO because they'll lose.

They're bled out right now.

They have problems. Another thing could be like, hey, pay a saboteur to sabotage the production line. But again, if it leads back to Russia, Article 5, right? NATO Article 5. NATO could be at war with Russia. But if you have this media campaign that convinces people that $200 million was sent to Ukraine and half of it is missing, and contact your congressman and tell them you don't want artillery shells going to Ukraine because half of them are being diverted to the cartels in Mexico. I have yet to see a cartel member with an M777 Howitzer, but you know, again, most people, right? They don't really understand what an M777 is. 7 Howards there is. But you can say, hey, half the artillery ammunition is being diverted to Mexico. Look, Tucker Carlson said half the weapons that were being sent to Ukraine are being diverted to Mexico. I have yet to see half of the M1 tanks we saw sent to Ukraine. I don't even know how they'd get them out. They can't get them out from the Black Sea. They'd have to railhead them, send them back through Poland get him to go to Antwerp, put him on a ship and float him to Mexico. Like some of this stuff's just absurd.

Agreed. Agreed.

But if you can convince people of this, then again, it's a weapons effector. So that's one thing we've seen with Russia saying Ukraine is corrupt. Your money is going to help you, Zelensky, buy yachts. Right. Right. The, I guess fairly recently there was Sudan. That's kind of similar, same thing with Tigray in Ethiopia. And what else are we seeing right now? I'm trying to think. There's a lot of—

We've got some real big players, right, in the national, international. We've got Russia, and right now their focus is Ukraine. We've got China, and I think they're lining up for Taiwan. That's their big play.

Yeah.

And we've got North Korea, who's just trying to steal as much money as possible to fund their regime. And then we've got Iran and Iran, you know, in support of the Houthis and everything else in the Middle East. I, you know, their, their national Iranian Republican Army is active. Are you seeing more from these other actors than typically what's showing up in the news?

I can't— so I'm really focused on China right now. So, yeah, I have started this whole series of the order of battle for Chinese units, like how the actual People's Liberation Army is organized, how the People's Liberation Army Navy is organized. So most of that is kind of focused on— most of my attention right now is kind of focused on the upcoming threat with China. So that's kind of a tough one. I haven't personally noticed that. That doesn't necessarily mean it's not there, but it's certainly— a lot of stuff is going on right now. Oh, actually, I can give you one. This is actually a pretty big one. I did a video about this a couple of days ago. Oh, so are you familiar with the ParkMobile hack?

Yes.

All right, so, um, a couple of, uh, couple of weeks ago, I guess a couple of months ago too, there was, uh, there was a website that was, uh, put up online and, uh, it was called, uh, it was a DodgeQuest, uh, yeah, DodgeQuest. Or DogeQuest. So DogeQuest essentially outed these Tesla owners all over the nation, including me. Home address, phone number, whatever. And a lot of it was data taken from the recent 2001, uh, hack of ParkMobile. And the ParkMobile, it worked because most people named their Tesla Tesla., right? Or Model 3 or whatever.

Yeah, right.

All you have to do is take that data, and when people sign up for ParkMobile, you have their name, their address, their phone number, and so on, and then the cars that they have. So all these guys had to do was take that information, throw it up there. Now, for other kinds of information, they used some sort of open— either open or commercially available database And that costs money. So someone, I don't know who, but someone or some organization is funding DogeQuest, right? Because that's the only way to get the marketing data for people. So that's kind of interesting. I don't know if that's a foreign actor or a domestic actor or what. I've actually said that one of my big fears with cyber warfare and influence operations is short selling. You know, um, a couple of, uh, I think it was last year, um, there was a company— I think, um, there were these two major— I think Woolworths, and there's another company. I think it was against Woolworths. So, um, people— there was this internet campaign that was started because I guess Woolworths had this, uh, uh, decided not to sell any merchandise for either Australia Day or Founders Day. It was the day that Australia was colonized by Captain Cook. I can't remember what that day was called. I'm just going to call it Australia Day. So Australia Day, it kind of grew to prominence in the '90s. And then like people slowly stopped celebrating it. Now like people really don't know about it. And so Woolworths decided they weren't going to sell Australia Day merchandise because like people really just don't celebrate Australia Day anymore. And people took that, right-wing people in Australia, they took that and they said, we're going to boycott Woolworths because they're not going to celebrate Australia Day. And the funny thing about that is that nobody celebrates Australia Day anyway anymore. But suddenly this is a big thing. It's a political cause.

To get behind.

Yeah. So, you know, apparently, like, nobody, nobody celebrates anymore. And I saw that I was like, I wonder if, if a short seller could have paid some organization, India, Eastern Europe, hey, put out this fake news, or put out these tweets about Australia Day. I'm gonna short a bunch of Woolworths stock, Well, their stock go down, make money on their arbitrage, right? I could not prove that.

Possible. You know, I would see that as something that some of the more sophisticated cybercriminal gangs would probably look to invest, especially the ones who have made tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in ransomware and so forth. They've got a little money to spend, right, in their pocket. And being able to short out companies, you know, we saw after GameStop, right? The GameStop, you know, issue and the manipulation in the markets for that were huge. We also saw during the Obama administration, right, where there was a fake tweet sent out and it dropped the market a huge amount. So, you know, there's precedent there for attackers, especially criminals, right? Cyber criminals to take advantage of it.

Right? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Look, uh, and the kind of the crazy thing is that it's really difficult to prove that you did it intentionally, right? Like, unless you did it right, the attestation, it can be almost impossible. Yeah, unless you can actually, um, Unless you can actually, uh, prove that someone made a payment to somebody else, you know, then like a— like you pro— you paid this company in India to put up these, these, uh, the, these posts about Australia Day. Unless you can prove that, then who's to say it wasn't dumb luck, right? You bought a bunch of— yeah, or that you shorted a bunch of stock. That's actually— you're talking about my book, The Wind Machine. You know, that book is about a hedge fund manager who has an AI-powered supercomputer, and this supercomputer predicts a war with China. And now the question is like, well, how can I profit off this? Right? Like, there's this dilemma of, well, you know, in this particular novel, the main character, they make money, but they can't make too much money because the SEC might catch on. But if there's going to be a war, that's a black swan event, right? Yeah, you could buy a bunch of stock or short a bunch of stock. All of a sudden this war happens. Now you're billionaires, you cash out, and it looks like dumb luck, right?

Right.

So yeah, that's kind of the question of the novel.

Well, then is cyber, you know, the risks around cyber, is it an opportunity, or is it truly a risk for society, free nations? And I guess a follow-on to that would be, what about the defense industry base? Do they see cyber as a risk or an opportunity?

That's a, that's a very good question. I think that It depends based on the cyber levels of your adversary. So, you know, if let's say a nation wants to go to war with— I'm just picking a random country out here— the Congo, right? If Congo isn't very connected, you may have a lot fewer cyber targets. And you have another problem with a lot of, a lot of nations, especially the United States. We don't tend to attack civilian targets, right? Most militaries, their, their networks are firewalled, or they're behind, they're on a totally different network, like the US has SIPR, SIPRNET, JWICS. Right? And that is not connected to the internet. Or if it is, it goes through what's called a cross-domain solution. So data gets fed across and checked. Yeah, where it goes in, or even when it goes out through DMZs, right?

Inner and outers and all sorts of filters and random checks and everything else.

Very hard to penetrate. But if, let's say, the US wanted to attack Russia, all right, with a cyberattack, how do we do that? Because are we going to attack a hospital? No, we're not going to do that. We're not going to attack the systems at a hospital. We're not going to attack the systems at a power plant. But our adversaries have no qualms about doing that. So in some cases, cyber tools are less effective than you might think, especially if you obey the law of armed conflict. Right. Whereas our adversaries, everything is on the table. Right?

So I'm thinking, I'm thinking if you're a General Dynamics, you're a Raytheon, you're a Rheinmetall, right? You've got a potential opportunity there if you can create weapons that can affect adversaries' critical infrastructure, military communications, whatever. Right? There's money to be made there. But on the other side, you also have to worry about your products and services being potentially exposed or attacked using similar kinds of technology. Right? And the more advanced our, you know, fighter jets are or our bombers or, you know, the 777 isn't using computerized, you know, interconnected, but eventually it will. You will have mobile artillery that's connected to the network that are all firing autonomously or semi-autonomously. And now is that, well, great benefits, but is that also a risk? So as that vendor, does it pose a significant risk? Where is that tension at? Like, I see them drooling going, there's billions of dollars to be made if we can create great cyber weapons. But at the same time, we can get cratered, our stock can get cratered if our regular hardware and kinetic warfare systems somehow get undermined.

No, I don't necessarily see that, that you might choose cyber over kinetic because at the end of the day, cyber can only do so much, right? You can't take and hold ground with cyber.

True.

Right. You— there's a lot of capabilities that a cyberattack might give you. Even to the point where you're, let's say, looking at the enemy's plans and operations. If the enemy has some sort of, let's say, battlefield control system and you discover some sort of vulnerability in the radios connected with that system, you might be able to attack that. But at the same time, that only kind of degrades what you're able to do. You still, you still have to have soldiers on the ground to actually take and hold ground at the end of the day.

But combined warfare, right? We've seen attacks where Israel undermined radar systems in Syria to allow fighter jets and bombers to come across the border, hit targets and come back.

Right.

I would hate to be the manufacturer of those Russian-made you know, radar, you know, devices, you know, and anti-air weapon systems, if they can be undermined like that. When we look at the, not the next generation, but the generation after that of battlefield drones, both on the ground and in the air, there's gonna be elements of autonomous targeting, especially when you get into an electronic contested environment and you're losing signal. If you can take those over and turn those around or repurpose them, I mean, that's— and it's still not the same as boots on the ground, but that can make a material difference, especially if you are a supplier of those equipment and weapons. So I can tell you, you lose that contract.

Yeah, I— that's— see, so I worked for, uh, an AI-based drone company Right. There's a company called Aeromed Lab and the company. So that's always a concern, right? The idea that, oh, the adversary could theoretically take over your drones. That takes a lot, though. You need to know the software. You need to know the hardware that's being used. And one thing that we did was essentially the, the, the the drone didn't have a radio at all. So once it went out, we actually couldn't recall it. And the only way that we could communicate with that drone once we sent it was using what's called a semaphore. So essentially, we would use, uh, almost like a QR code.

Okay.

And that would let the drone know, okay, you're off program. So if you're told like, hey, ignore all inputs unless you see this specific semaphore first, then that pretty much protects you against any kind of hacking. So yeah, that's, I don't know, I don't know about that, whether—

For every defense, there is always a workaround, right? And when you look at, let's see, uranium refiners, centrifuges in an air-gapped network inside of a mountain inside Iran, "Oh, it'd be impossible to hack those." And yet it's not, right? And that's an old hack. And we're seeing more and more in the hardware space.

So how did that happen, right?

I'm gonna hack the firmware you're going to use and they will come under my control at a certain date once you launch them, right?

Yeah, that's, so that's a tough one, right? Like, you're talking about the Stuxnet hack, right? Sure. And that was done, I believe they used the printer updates, right? But again, if you push everything through a cross-domain solution, then you really don't need to worry about that, right? Well, you still need to worry about it. You're worrying about it by putting it through a cross-domain solution first, right? You're putting it through a CDL.

Yeah, you get past the air gap network.

Yeah, or an air gap network.

Yep.

And even then, like, you wouldn't normally take a thumb drive, just plug it into a computer. And this is one of the reasons—

not now. Back then they did.

They did. But certainly not now. Right. So yeah, I, every, any kind of network is always a trade-off between usability and security, right? You can have the most secure system in the world. I take my computer into a closed room inside a Faraday cage. It's great, works out really well. But it's really difficult to get information to it. Right? So I don't know. Usually air gap networks tend to be very difficult to penetrate, right? Unless you have a person on the ground. And, you know, that can be very tough, especially because, you you'd have to find the right person and you'd have to exploit that person and, and get them to do something they wouldn't normally do. Right. And normally in, in countries where you're working for the regime, I mean, you're pretty well vetted and you know what side your bread is buttered on. You know, one of the, one of the things people complained about when Doge started firing people was like, hey, what if some of these people with security clearances decide to go to Russia, sell their secrets to Russia or China as revenge for, for getting fired? And like, that, that is the kind of thing someone who's never held a security clearance would say. Right? Like, for the most part, you're just not doing that. Like most people take their oath very, very seriously. So yeah, I think just having an air-gapped network seems very, very difficult to penetrate.

So last question. And so, you know, we've got a lot of viewers that are cybersecurity leaders, CISOs, directors, things of that sort. And, you know, you cover so much. Given the pressure and the risks, right, of geopolitical warfare, whether it's kinetic or political, you know, misinformation, cyber, whatever it is, right? How do you think cybersecurity leaders should act, should be adapting now for potentially what's coming?

Oh, that's a very good question. I think that they should come up with plans for how to deal with things like a two-man rule. Let's say a war does start and, you know, it could be something as simple as you work for a company that does the bookkeeping for a company that supplies screws for the F-35.

Right?

You need to worry about elicitation. You need to worry about your people accidentally or intentionally exposing your client's client through your systems, right? Could just be as simple as you share your bookkeeping link with another company and that other company works for Lockheed Martin and that is a vector, right? That is an attack vector. So that's probably something companies should start doing is just coming up with a plan in the event of war of how you're going to react to that, which could be as simple as, hey, if you ever access this kind of information, you have to have a two-man rule. Two people always have to be on the computer at any given time to make sure you're keeping the other guy honest. Another is training people in elicitation. You know, like, like, you know, I, I heard that, that your channel, your Cybersecurity Insights channel only makes $200 a month.

Really? That's very interesting.

Now what you're supposed to do is just— I know what I'm supposed to do.

I train people on behavioral and cognitive security. And Ryan, where did you hear that from?

So that's kind of like a lot of people, they like to correct information. Of course.

Of course.

You know, like, hey, you know, I could walk up to someone and say, like, you know, hey, you know, I heard your company was laying people off between April and May. Like, oh, no, no, no, that's not until June. Right? And a lot of companies, they don't think like that, right? They don't think that they need to train people in the art of avoiding elicitation, right?

I love that aspect, right? That behavioral and cognitive security in training people because it's not just the technical defenses. It's also the wetware that is a major risk. And I think the biggest nation states, they absolutely know this and they're experts in it, right? You look at Russia, you look at China, North Korea, not so much, but you look at, you know, definitely Russia and China, they've been playing this game for a very long time. And some of the best practices that we have are actually documented. It's known that, you know, two-man rule, you know, isolation, segregation, you know, zero trust is big, which is just micro-segmentation on many different layers, right? All these practices are known. We just need to apply them into the private sector.

It is. If people only use this damn thing, there would be so many— like, every account I have is controlled with a hardware key.

I love those. Top-notch security. I really do.

And, you know, the idea of connecting to something without a hardware key, like, I just just won't do it.

Yep, yep.

There's some things like your bank or whatever that, that you might have to, you know, that they haven't, uh, developed hardware key technology yet, but maybe you need a new bank, right? This is, this is a big, it's a big deal.

I agree, and you should put those hardened controls around the assets that are most important to you, right? Like your financial accounts, like potentially your health accounts.

One thing that I had made a video on this. One suggestion I had was to— your bank accounts should— if you have the ability to do this, buy like a Chromebook, right? And only access your bank accounts on your Chromebook. And use a different email address than you normally use.

Dedicated systems.

Dedicated systems.

Another best practice, right?

Yes. And by doing that, you know, If you ever get an email to your regular email that says, "Hey, your bank requires you to log in to change this thing," then that's a pretty good indicator that whoever is sending you this is not authentic, right? Because I only get emails about my bank at this email address, not this one.

And some of us already do that. But yes, it absolutely is a best practice. Truly great insights here. Ryan McBeth is the author of The Wind Machine, available on Amazon, and I will put the link in the description. There it is. And he is truly a social media powerhouse with his self-titled YouTube channel, Ryan McBeth. Be sure to go check out both, uh, and for all his geopolitical warfare insights. Ryan, hey, such a pleasure, man. Thank you for coming and talking with me today.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

All right. And thank you all for watching. Be sure to subscribe and catch all the Cybersecurity Vault episodes where we chat with industry leaders like Ryan to dive into the most relevant and interesting cybersecurity challenges, perspectives, and best practices. We'll see you next time.