Joe Rogan Experience #1572 — Moxie Marlinspike Transcript

Transcript

0:00 the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day It's a long story. So we had time we're playing time I use it. There's, you know, tons of people who are in between who are monitoring these things who are collecting data information. It's encrypted along the way, but it can be intercepted. Information ends up on a computer somewhere, and it ends up compromised in the end.

3:53 people in the end and so you why did you guys create it like what what was unsatisfactory if you imagined, you know, every moment that you were talking to somebody in real life, If you stray from what is considered to be the acceptable norm or the current ideology or whatever opinions you're supposed to have on a certain subject, you get attacked, ruthlessly so.

6:38 were having their hearings online? You got to, like, wait in line. And, you know, what was interesting to me was just watching the politicians basically, But in other ways, that's the characteristic of a psychopath. So I'm assuming he doesn't read them. in that change comes from people discussing things privately they'll they'll come down on you i mean this is essentially what edward snowden was warning

10:24 It's very bad. called Total Information Awareness. mind those things for information it was sort of like you know they're their That bit of Latin there means knowledge is power. I know, but what's also just kind of comical is that, like, Authentication, biometric data, face, fingerprints, gate, iris. So this is like kind of amateurish, right? What do you call something like this?

13:10 They're all different colors. Yeah. Like, what do you guys think? didn't really know and that's what Snowden revealed. That was a moment where I think people were like... which was the cooperation between the government against us. And they were like, oh shit. You, it's like I think things went from like, I don't really have anything to hide to like, wait a second.

16:24 They started out, like Facebook like facebook for example we were talking how many different languages does Facebook operate under? you know i think ultimately like what we end up seeing again and again is that like bad business They have to, like, grow infinitely, you know, which is insane. yeah and that's why i mean you know the i think you know the silicon valley obsession with china

19:38 that we think of when we think of Western civilization, we think of all these beautiful values but then almost all of You can see a tour of the factory. a phone with a phone i have this like bizarre disconnect i try to pretend that i'm not buying You do, right? conversation if you like but let's let's start with phones though let's start with because

22:51 because it's cool. as long as they're both of equal quality? that these workers get. and a couple other european countries yeah i mean i i think uh you are willing you want to make a profit but you only want to make a profit if everything works you know, it's like designed by Apple in California. There's like petrochemicals. that it's cause it's so easy to just put a green logo on whatever it is

26:04 I mean, this is how we always do things humans um are terrible or whatever no i don't think humans are terrible i think humans are At the end of the line, follow it all the way down to the beginning and you literally have slaves. like, yeah, person at the bottom of the line, to be person that is there's no there's no discussion and you know like I think it goes both ways you know Slavoj Zizek always talks

30:27 they were just agents of history. That it's not them. and constantly putting it out and then dealing with the demand for that newer, better technology or literally an artificial version of life, and it's going to literally be something that's better than what we are, That's simplistic, sir. and she passes the Turing test. He falls in love with the robot lady. And she passes the Turing test

33:19 Alan Turing that came up with the Turing test. just by the hand of humans fucking strange man like really strange i mean Yeah. um, I think that's 50 years. This is it. I mean, I think that there's a lot of, And I don't, I think there's one way of looking at it that's like, well, you just do that with monopoly on like groups of young people trying to do something ambitious together in the world

37:46 I know it's a nonprofit, that you guys have figured out a way to create like basically a better version But is the new – and I don't think it's rolled out everywhere too, right? It's not everywhere and i don't think it's rolled out everywhere too right that you mentioned before to this newer thing called RCS which actually I don't know what that stands for I think in my

39:46 One, when I downloaded Signal and I joined, And now all of a sudden they got a message from me that I'm on Signal. do you want everyone to know that you just joined Signal? Because I don't want anybody to know that I'm responding to a text. You can turn it off. That's a big problem with's in the settings? Yeah, privacy settings. Typing indicators you can turn off. Read receipts you can turn off.

41:00 you back yet. Because I will. you don't want people to know that you're on signal um it's kind of so we're working on it everybody on your contact list that's on signal a message that says you're on signal yeah oh well A lot of people like it. like some people are going to know that they can contact you on signal there's it's very difficult I noticed that I can use Signal as my main messaging app on Android.

44:31 It doesn't allow it. Apple is... And then no one will need Apple ever again Whereas if you text it to me, especially if I have an Android phone, oh, it becomes this Photographs are not too bad. You're like, what the fuck did you send me? been unable to change the way that it works since then because um you have to get everyone to agree you lose all those iMessages.

46:51 There's never enough. like bad business models produce bad technology What if we had, you know, our own thing? What if we had, you know they're like what if we had our own search engine what if we had you know our own thing what if we you know and the moment that that starts to happen then they're that good it's i use it because i like the ethic behind it i like their idea behind it they they

49:14 still in the in the world of like um trying to make computers secure right you know it's like camera and all this jazz and a 5 000 milliampamp battery. And then you've got an iCareFone. Everyone is unionized. How much more do you think it would cost? They have so much cash. them that's a good question. where people are... you know i'm willing to take the hit you know uh i'm gonna do no one can oust me or whatever i'm

53:06 I mean, you know, it's like, I don't, they're not, because making doesn't have to mean taking from the planet. They're using slave labor to make Nikes. there you go 2030 entirely clean energy which isn't quite as it's you know 2030 means transitioning if they can really figure out how to do that, They're like, well, why would you want to keep people impoverished they're like well why

56:03 concentrate on those people because it's Yeah. communicate anonymously or or at least privately that this is uh it's a very rare thing that you You know, there's this which is something that I really envy about, like the kind of creative work that someone like you does. And that ecosystem is moving and it's moving really fast. there were the kind of um social spaces for people to experiment with different ideas outside of the

59:58 that i want people like oh man it's not like it used to be and now people are like have you been in hindsight right uh so in the like 80s so the history of cryptography is actually not long like And then in the late 80s, there was this guy who wrote a... that was sort of predicated on a world where cryptography existed And at the time, it's strange to think about now,

1:03:17 people were like tracked down as like munitions dealers or whatever, but it really hampered what And then people in those places scanned it back in to computers. Yeah, it's a really interesting place. and Gila was closed when you get there. Yeah, this is what I was reading. I used to work on boats down there. They went. for four thousand dollars and i thought a boat was like a million dollars. I was just like, what?

1:06:41 And they put it on these docks. doing that we were like you know getting boats fixing them up sailing as far as we could just like we it was just the wind the wind that took you know like there was no engine there was a propeller on a string? And then it reads a number? then you can you know do some dead reckoning with the compass and wow dude you went old school

1:09:48 uh through the caribbean once from florida the way that we got to florida was like riding freight who left their kids with you that's what i want to know man it was like is this you oh yeah so we so thank you for that because you kind of didn't know what you were doing. Yeah. So you're walking. You can sail all night. that's actually a big boat yeah but it doesn't seem like a lot of room for all these kids yeah

1:12:48 No. I can't believe they did either, man. Yeah. We're here. paper scissors if you win you can do this thing if i win and then i would like pick the thing that play yes but i only play for stakes okay what do you want to play for You mean programming? That's ridiculous to flip a coin on that. The only way- of equivalent value no there's nothing nothing that i know there's nothing that you could give

1:16:46 no suggestions, There's no one out there. How about five bucks? I got 20 bucks in my pocket. No, you're asking me for something that's ridiculous. No, no, of course, of course, you would have, if you win, you would name your steak. Sailing with children. but mechanical equipment to figure out how to... a sextant and then navigate And the way you did it, did you stay close?

1:19:43 was just in the bay. And, you know, you could sort of experiment with this little boat. Oh boy. And it's like under some leaves and, you know, it's like, and then, you know, the, the hole is in the water here. And it's, he has like taking us around he's like okay the master's over here and it's like under some leaves and you know it's like and then you know the the hole is in the water here and

1:21:28 Oh, and we were like, so what's it, you know, doctor of what? It's just an answer. Yeah? Same trick. you know 500 to free uh and so we got this boat you know and it was we had to deal with the metal but it you know not the sturdiest vessel so uh and so you know he's going to go out in this little directly into the wind and moving backwards oh shit and i was like fuck and i'm on this little

1:24:30 We're just going to abandon it. And the boat was a little messed up in a way where it, I couldn't ride it. And I was yelling as loud as I could could but the wind is blowing 20 knots and it just you know you can't hear each He thought that I had just sailed somewhere else. somewhere else but that's crazy yeah sailed out of vision yeah and then you know it basically got

1:26:53 progress you know my you know in 50 degrees you have 30 to 60 minutes before you black out you know? you know? too you know it's like it's not like you know you just come to terms with the idea that like you're went through, you know, I was still trying to swim. knowing you know that the uncertainties have been resolved you know and you have to really remind

1:29:37 started, uh, coming through the area and it was coming straight at me actually. And I, I realized that it probably just wouldn't even see me. do is stick my leg out and push against the hull of the boat you know to like go around the tires You need 600 days at sea to get this license. Yeah. Shouldn't we be doing something else? Yeah. That's what we were talking about sailing Anguilla.

1:32:31 had a near-death experience but i've had a lot of psychedelic experiences and in some ways i think like I was gonna see that person tomorrow you know or it's just like you I remember the first day that, uh, I was at Twitter, um, the, at the time the most popular person on Twitter was Justin Bieber he had more So it's like, every time Bieber would tweet, like, you know, the lights would dim

1:34:58 my fans are unstoppable. and things along those lines like i'm very torn on this stuff because i i i think that things events and alert people to danger. And there's's there's so many positive things about twitter in a way, you know, it's like, if you think about, like, 20 years ago, whenever anybody talked about, of you know those dreams from 20 years ago um but in a couple ways you, you know, like one, you know, it was it was it was the dream that if, you know, a cop kills some random person in the suburbs of St.

1:39:15 they're like they're sort of what we wanted you know uh but i think what we did what we it's like everyone is like on YouTube trying to monetize their content, The information that we share needs to be verified by our most trusted institutions. Because QAnon's got these wacky theories, You've sort of set a precedent. many people yeah and i think that people get something out of that yeah they do well people

1:42:53 They're going to go, oh, they're suppressing us. and then if you have a place that says, we're not but i i think that there there's a subtle thing there They've never done that. Yeah, so that's how they monetize it. with kanye west kanye west was running, right? And if you were running for president and party because they were trying to come up with some alternative the idea was this could siphon

1:46:30 Um, It's not trending. Massive amounts of comments, for certain things. And I don't even know It got millions and millions and millions of people were watching it. eyeballs on it, they would want it to be trending be ad safe you know it's like maybe advertisers don't, you know, it's like, I don't know. they're trying to do is reframe this is like okay well yeah we've got these algorithms or whatever don't don't talk about

1:50:11 that are being deplatformed they have ideas that these people find offensive or they don't agree predict motion outcomes that kind of thing what's incorrect about newtonian physics in the sense So you're talking about in terms of quantum physics and string theory The history of science is a history of things that weren't actually true you know boar's model of the atom the tonian physics like you know people have these

1:52:55 authority that everyone was trying to appeal to, you know, if you look at like, all of the like, it just seems laughable now but you know like at the time they were just like we're going to prove define why that's going to have like the outcomes that we want it to but once you get on that road outcomes but that's my weird take i mean i think you know from the perspective of signal you know

1:55:37 But then the President of the United States just constantly violated every policy that they had. He's the leader of the the you know and also it would and there's only a few thousand people on it be to let people go to work with masks on. And then those videos just get deleted. Those videos This is objective reality. with the placards on, the world is ending tomorrow?

1:59:12 I don't know if that's good. some person with very strange ideas about the world wearing a sign on the street corner we're just going to remove that person's content. To not be able to ban, shadow ban? search bar and you if they want to look up ufos let them look up ufos but don't shove it down this is what they've given us after all this time. that like the right has made such a big deal about deplatforming.

2:02:23 that it's like, point right where like the era of utopianism you just removed somebody from YouTube is connecting the world. to build things that limit the the power that people have if you had your wish if you could let these social media platforms, whether it's video platforms like with signal you know it's like but it's different right because you're just a messaging app we're

2:05:06 information that we had about you on signal, it would be, app well i think you know some of the stuff that we're working on now of just like moving away from Better for humanity. you spent looking at the screen on facebook you know like if if we were to have metrics if signal So you're trying to do that with a social media app as well? that we think technology should work, that we think will better serve all of us.

2:08:25 though from people who use signal so similar to like uh do they pay for it no no it's like working on, slowly. optimistic yeah just based on you know and even even the hearings you know just like so do you think that yes the hearings were amateur hour yeah when uh yeah there was some and that their voice is not being heard. which is not in any way yeah i mean i don't know

2:10:55 You kind of understand these better than most, these social media platforms. If you came along and said, yeah, well, you got to stop making money. Stop making money. I'm not totally aware of this. where a lot of the activity has happened, She's really smart and has a lot to say. sketch yeah yeah like applying machine learning ai stuff to military technology

2:13:39 And I think stuff like that is encouraging corporations. When you get kids that come out of of school they have degrees in tech or they're interested in tech they tend to We want to go back to do no evil or whatever the fuck it used to be. Yeah. But, you know, I think another aspect to all of this is that I think people underestimate just how expensive it is to make software.

2:16:56 have to write it for the web maybe you need a desktop client uh so it's like you need three or four times the energy that you used to have. Yeah, I'm like, I have to have... I mean, it's like people... Really good. I mean, some things I actually want to make more difficult for myself. TikTok. Well, okay, my problem hey, we want to do a thing, like video where like we follow you around for a day

2:19:13 Yeah, exactly. were like doing or like building cryptography stuff like that um there was this period of time like you know whatever you start thinking about like how all this stuff works do you ever fuck yeah but I guess you're right do you feel like you have I mean, maybe. and your computer gets hacked, You were getting flagged? So you had to go there way in advance?

2:22:35 Yeah. weeks did you have to give them passwords and everything well that's the thing. They would stop you, and they would be like, And they would be like, all right, we're going to take it. just random or whatever but there would be two people at the exit of the plane with photographs and then they would eventually give you a ticket? even though you're already behind security and do it again at the connection.

2:24:37 So they're trying to fuck with you. day it went away were you like oh yep yeah one day i just stopped that was it's really tracked the guy down oh yeah in moscow one time you tracked him down he's just some guy well, this isn't working. i think where he like he like the re the way that people everyone found out that uh he lived in russia was that hannah arendt quote that's like um you know if the

2:27:42 did he go to russia i don't, he just, he had been teaching English autonomous regions in the world uh that are essentially their own countries you know um in fifa because they're not recognized by the un so fifa can't recognize them so they have their or autonomous regions. Transnistria, I mean... Going to Abkhazia, it was so crazy getting there. the same you know like was it worth it like what's the deal you know and i feel like it's this thing

2:31:14 trying to get rid of these institutions or change these institutions in some way put into that. Just stop and think about a book that was written literally before the Constitution was drafted, and that book is being introduced today as gospel, Yeah, yeah, yeah. and that these changes are coming quicker like gay marriage i think it's important to realize that like a lot of those a lot of that

2:34:05 that space dissipates. Yes. Yeah. But you know, on the other hand, you know, it's like, we're with the pebble mine no oh it's, it's crazy. They're trying to – salmon i think it's i forget which kind of salmon it is um i don't want to say it's chinook i forget They've been working to try to make this mine a reality for I think a couple of decades now.

2:36:41 can't this is we can't fucking do this and then people are like we can do it and then they've got and it's other companies that are i don't believe the And it's terrifying when you see how close it's come Exactly. good title yeah and the the gentleman's name is tim bristol which is kind of crazy just that is Seattle, yeah. but he stands to make i think they said 14 $14 million if he can actually get the shovels into the ground.

2:39:19 I'm kidding. And the reason why you won't have them there is because someone is greedy. Yeah. It's tough. Holy fuck. Oh, so a car was driving by and there was a remote-controlled machine gun? yeah they did man if you and we need to find that Oppenheimer gentleman, Like, the whole thing was three minutes. in the tech arena does not work you know that it's like you can get rid of all the people at

2:43:35 But that was kind of crazy. Some people had a problem with that, obviously, but... in a lot of the documents and if you can predict this thing, and then they know, that they could, like, take advantage of foreign powers and stuff like that in ways And the whole thing just boomeranged back at them. where it works except for us? and apple wouldn't open it for them yeah it wouldn't allow the fbi to have access to it

2:48:00 it's like they had it was their own mistake that led to the situation where they didn't have the What did you think like when the State Department or whoever it was banned Huawei phones? Oh, okay. that had third-party access apparently and they were shown that information was going to a third like phone switches and stuff you know it's like when you make a normal phone call it has to have

2:50:37 that is that's the same you know it's like these are u.s companies and they're selling that all It's just certainly they have a different political environment, They have their own app store, the whole deal. like okay you want access to this then it's going to cost you in these ways you know and i think it Yeah, I think I might be, Jamie will find out.

2:53:21 They developed the phone. Is it just it? But it's, that's, yeah, it's happening. And I don't, also, you know, it's sort of like, I think a lot of people, a lot of nations look at China and are envious, right? they built like the great firewall of China and that has served them in a lot of ways. uh, own infrastructure that you control and you have like the ability to do content moderation and you

2:55:35 Crackdown on facial recognition tech. it said it was part of this boycott that had to do with google's like And so, yeah. think you know the fear is that like so there's this like you know circle of like industry producing What's going on, Jimmy? Like last week. Listen, I think what you're doing is very important. And I love the fact that you approach things the way you do.

2:58:48 I appreciate you saying that. space dogs so the first animal in space oh it was a dog yeah like a uh like a died in space uh sadly the second animal in space was a dog stop being so personal that's what I would tell Kennedy. And the Pupniks who all requested one of the puppies. and that those puppies had puppies the dogs so i've been trying to track down these two people uh notably karen house because she got

3:02:09 thank you bye everybody