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Radio War Nerd EP #467 — Pavel Durov, Telegram & Internet Weaponry, feat. Yasha Levine (Patreon)

Published:
2024-08-31 02:36:32
Edited:
2024-09-03 02:12:00
Imported:
2024-08
Tags:

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Content

Guest: Yasha Levine

Recorded: August 29, 2024

Friend o' the show Yasha Levine returns to talk about his dining experiences with recently-jailed Telegram billionaire Pavel Durov, Telegram and governments, the powerful myths that keep us hooked into the largest surveillance weapon ever conceived.

Subscribe to Yasha's substack here.Buy Yasha's book Surveillance Valley.Follow Yasha on twitter and other surveillance platforms.

Previous RWN episodes with Yasha:-EP #357 — Out Of Russia & Into The Twittergarchy, with Yasha Levine-EP #229 — 50 Years of US Mercenary Coups + Yasha Levine on Weaponized Immigrants-EP #126 — Early Portuguese Empire + Yasha Levine on Cambridge Analytica-EP #120 — The Secret Military History of the Internet, with Yasha Levine-EP #66 — Yasha Levine on Russia Hacker Panic

Total time: 1:48:01

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

Lloyd Morcom

Hey guys, why has the link to the episode disappeared? I download each episode so I can put it on a USB stick and listen to it in my car.

Brendon

You can download the episode in Patreon by clicking on the three dots.

Bryan Welch

Babe wake up new Yasha War Nerd episode just dropped

Hugh

When I click on the 3 dots, I just get a "Report this content" option. (edit) Ah, that's just on my general feed. If I click the ep link and then on the 3 dots, I get the download option. Leaving my small discovery here for those who are as challenged as I am.

NYCM&AHole

No I need to go to sleep

Brendon

You can download the episode in Patreon by clicking on the three dots.

Fire, Fury and Drones

What do you mean in Patreon? Is there an app? I'm in the browser and the links worked wonders previously.

Fire, Fury and Drones

It's on the post listed in /radiowarnerd/posts that three dots get the download option

GC

Exceptionally good episode! The scene you discuss is actually from the sequel to Little Brother (called Homeland). Yasha seems to have, very understandably, created a survivable screen memory of the scene as a last-ditch psychological defense. It brings me no pleasure to report that it is far, far worse than your conversation suggests. I am going to inflict the actual scene upon this comments section. The novel's protagonist, Marcus ("M1k3y") and his girlfriend Ange get stuck in a dust storm at Burning Man (as you describe). They come across a "hexa-yurt" and, once inside, are given baby wipes by mysterious characters named "John", "Mitch", "Barlow", and "Wil". (It's downhill from here.) "Wil" is running a D&D game for the other three, which Marcus and Ange are immediately invited to join. The "suspense" last for six paragraphs, at which point three fourths of the mystery is resolved. "John", "Mitch" and "Barlow" are fawning, hagiographic caricatures of the EFF founders. "Wil," in a staggering act of authorial discipline, is as yet, unidentified. Below I reproduce the scene of revelation, in pertinent part. ======================================================= “Wait, wait,” I said. “You're John Perry Barlow?” The guy in the kerchief nodded and grinned like a pirate. “And you're John Gilmore?” John shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “And you're Mitch Kapor?” The guy with the Van Dyke gave a little wave. Ange was looking slightly left out. “Ange, these guys founded EFF. That one started the first ISP the [sic] San Francisco; that one commercialized spreadsheets; and that one wrote the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.” Barlow laughed like a cement-mixer. “And turned teraliters of sewage into gigaliters of diesel fuel with tailored algae. Also, I wrote a song or two. Since we're on the subject.” [Ed.: they were not on the subject of songwriting.] “Oh yeah,” I said. “Barlow also wrote songs for the Grateful Dead.” Ange shook her head. “You make them sound like the elder gods of the Internet.” “Enough with the 'elder' stuff,” Mitch said, and sipped his tea. “You certainly seem to know your Internet trivia, young man.” I blushed. . . . [The four then receive a brief expository summary of /Little Brother/ and say how they impressed are with the protagonist's actions in that novel.] Wil laughed aloud at that. “That was you?” he said. He put on a hard-boiled detective voice: “Of all the yurts in all the playa, they had to walk into mine.” Mitch held out his hand. “It's an honor, sir,” he said. I shook his hand, tongue-tied. The others followed suit. I was in a daze, and when John told me that he “really admired the work” I'd done, I thought I'd die from delight. [some more bullshit, after which the storm lets up] Wil came over and handed me another cup of mint tea, the leaves floating in the hot water. [. . . more expository dialog. . .] I knew him from somewhere. It was driving me crazy. “Look, do I know you? You look really familiar --” “Ha!” he said. “I thought you knew. I made some movies when I was a kid, and I was on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and --” My jaw dropped so low I felt like it was in danger of scraping my chest. “You're Wil Wheaton?” =======================================================

xnfec

Interestingly, Trump is now threatening Zuckerberg.

fw

Seeing this drop as i was talking about how good SV is to a friend (currently just started reading) both made my day and made me laugh at how much of a dork I probably am.

fw

Wow, and the doctorow mention is also spooky: I had just read https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine (because I had looked it up via being very interested in what doctorow and levine knew or thought of one another) hence the discussion - friend has been following Musk's battles with Brazil and the judge's precedent with other tech platforms, hence the connection. used to like Doctorow's work as a child and am really surprised the more I hear about this stuff that more people aren't calling it out (as in a general sense of things being discussed, not @ CD personally). SV in particular is really illuminating about a lot of progressive or 'left' intelligentsia/academic types (to badly misquote Dolan) is how naked a lot of the military collab but also theory crossover is once you know your 'internet history'. That far left branded types have been able to play their cybernetics and 'antifascist osint' with a straight face - british orgs like tsn having personnel-to-financial links to bellingcat is just one example of many, not to mention novara's Fully Automated Luxury space Colonialism/Communism crusade - without being called out just gets more and more mind boggling.

fw

Truly amazing, thank you

chee rabbits

this man really doesn't know what he's talking about, and is extremely wrong repeatedly

Hans Anders

My guess is they want Telegram to do political censorship proactively. Right now Telegram censors channels like RT and RNN because it’s legally required to. But the EU is slow to outlaw such organisations and if they do so too often, it makes them look bad. They need the companies to censor, so the government doesn’t have to. Facebook and Twitter play ball, Telegram must too.

Karl Childers

this is very compelling but, what are you talking about. how about giving an example

Shfifty_five

Really? Your saying that about Yasha? Not even close. Dude's incredibly knowledgeable and pretty low key about it. Plus, most of us on the Left are nerds at heart, mldly hip at best. That's great and all, but Sasha's one dude that's always been legitimately cool.

Marcos Rubios

Thank you for your well thought out and detailed criticism, I’m sure others will find it useful.

Jonathan Flowers

when i studied russian at the university of colorado in 2016 they had us make a vkontakte profile for class lol

Harvey Marsalko

Minute 38: I'm glad I'm not the only one who reads blue-sky as a polish surname

drizzly_november

I’ve heard Yasha tell this story nearly a dozen times on RWN, I’ve read his book, and I’m still never not shocked at this history and how it’s been covered up.

Joe S.

Could any of you kind and noble computer nerds explain in layman's terms how tor is different from a VPN? The way he described it sounds like how I always thought vpns worked, essentially changing your address so it looks like you are somewhere else. What am I missing?

Jake Palmer

With a VPN you redirect through the VPN provider's servers. With Tor, you redirect through several layers of Tor user's nodes, revealing only what is absolutely necessary to reveal along the way. That's why using Tor is free and using a VPN (generally) isn't. Tbh, I found Yasha's insistence on poo-pooing secure communication and lumping all approaches to it into a "just using a lock" metaphor massively unhelpful to say the least. He isn't wrong on a lot of it, but the way he describes it is so misleading to someone who isn't familiar with where he's coming from. And it's unfortunate the phrase "threat model" didn't come up even once in this interview.

G

The part clowning on the homophobic anarchists is hilarious

Blown Magnet

I can think of one example where a CEO found himself in hot water - Carlos Ghosn, the French CEO of Nissan, had to have himself smuggled out of Japan after a warrant was issued for his arrest in Japan. I can’t remember what the crime was - might have been corporate fraud or something.

Hans Anders

In my view all of those concerns were addressed in some form later in the episode…

OH

Telegram was still kind of a niche product. Only had 5 million paying users. Let’s not forget that for the vast majority of people “privacy” means not getting my messages exposed to my friends or family, not accidentally leaking my info to social media, not getting hacked by someone who wants money. No one really cares about the NSA or FBI accessing my messages it’s just not a concern for the average person. In those terms apps like WhatsApp or iMessage with their encryption and safety features are pretty good. Only in the drug dealer or crypto bro scene is telegram or tor a thing.

Schaeffer Mallory

Gonna put up a yard sign that says Landlines Save Lives

Terry Dunk

Literally inside of a suitcase like Oceans 11 lol. We'll see if Durov has the wherewithal (or flexibility) to try similar.

Miko

Off topic, re-listened to the "bleeding kansas" RWN episode and was struck by the similarities to today. The US fed and state level leading the charge in draconian squashing of public dissent on the slave issue in Kansas very similar to the same methods used to silence voices today protesting the Gaza genocide. Public dissent is to be silenced, no.matter.what. The US govt is definitely consistent in being on the wrong side of almost every moral issue. Always has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future.

Ander Pierce

When I look away for a moment, come back, and am surprised by a RWN episode, it is a delightful feeling.

Brendan O

i thought this EFF article on defending oneself against campus surveillance is great https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/surveillance-defense-campus-protests i get that the tech&policies from the privacy advocates are imperfect relative to top tier u.s. intelligence surveillance, but there are lots of places this stuff is important. like protecting many, many gaza protesters from going to jail or losing jobs. apple, signal, tor etc really can protect you as the article details

Brendan O

in other words, as mentioned above, a discussion on security without mentioning the threat model is not a good discussion (of security)

Brendan O

i think you have the right questions and they weren't comprehensively addressed. the NSA & U.S. intelligence services have an interest in both offensive and defensive capabilities, and Signal and Tor could help, for example, U.S. spies or allies or whatever to exchange information (as Yasha remarked for Tor). U.S. fed intel agencies' decision to fund public research on defensive capabilities obviously has tradeoffs and it's odd to assume they exactly forecasted the correct tradeoff even from their perspective. the missing piece of this - on a *technical* level, are these technologies compromised due to their funding or other connections to U.S. intel, and *how* exactly? for Signal, the best case one could make is NSA scientists get to better keep up with the technical details of the strongest encrypted messenger app out there - perhaps they have a small edge in attacking it compared to other large-nation-state-level security services. i wonder if the situation is, signal, tor and the like can be attacked by the NSA if it's a small number of high-value targets, but at the same time the tech greatly impedes FBI and law enforcement agencies. "The feds" encompasses many different agencies with differing goals and incentives. that's why i think it's useful to look at concrete cases, like the EFF article i posted on how campus protesters can practically protect their own safety

Matthias Höck

Pointing out the obvious here: Free Speech is free, moderating harmful content is expensive (even wit AI).

Ander Pierce

I'm far from a libertarian, but usually end up on the same page with them when it comes to government malfeasance.

ElGatoMalandrin

I know I’m late but I had to point out: River water isn’t brown because of dirt (usually) it’s because of tanins from leaves and other organic matter

dykeney houston

i think the counterinsurgency quality of the internet is totally underrealized and still under-acknowledged as a threat.

Christopher Price

ok.ru is very much alive and well, and is a good place to find sports and movies