Frank Abagnale: "Catch Me If You Can" | Talks at Google

oh, we have to buy. All this absolutely, but I'll tell you what, since we have to buy everything, why don't we demonstrate how it works and you use me? Okay, sit here, I took a picture and hit the car. She was going down the elevator studying the card. It had a blue border at the top about a half inch in pan am blue, but not a single thing on the card said pan am or logo or insignia or company name. It was a plastic card like a credit card, so you couldn't write on it. I couldn't write on it I couldn't print on it Disheartened I put it in my pocket Back at the hotel As I was walking back I realized I had passed a hobby shop so I turned around and walked back Excuse me.

I see that you sell a lot of models here, you sell models of commercial airplanes, I'm sure there and I bought a model of a Pan am 707 cargo plane. I took it to my room, opened the box, threw out all the parts, but there, in the lower. the box was a sticker sheet of the model and when soaked in a glass of water, the little tray and blue balloon that went on the tail of the plastic plane fit perfectly on top of the plastic card and the word bread A.M. and the special style of graphics that have been placed in the fuchsia shelter was perfect on the top of the card and a clear sticker on the laminated plastic made a beautiful ID card panel.

It says they estimate that between the ages of 16 and 18 I flew over a million free miles, boarded over 260 commercial airplanes in over 26 countries around the world pan am says keep in mind the fact that

frank

abagnale

actually He posed as one of our pilots for a long period of time, he never came on board one of our planes, that's true, I never flew Pan Am because I was afraid someone might tell me you know I live in San Francisco and I've been There for 16 years I don't remember meeting you before or that anyone could tell me you know your ID card isn't exactly the same as my ID card so instead I flew over everyone else if I wanted to go somewhere literally , I simply walked to the airport, boarded United Flight 800 to Chicago, then walked down to Doormarks United operations and walked into the operations clerk.

Hello Pan, what can we do? do it for you, it's one of the jump seats open in 800 and he did it in Chicago. It's open tonight. To get a ping pass, I would give it my ID and it would write me a pass. It would be delivered to the flight. Assistant, she opened the cabin door and I entered. They had a captain, a co-pilot, a flight engineer in a seat behind the captain, called the monkey where the pilots sit still during work hours now because the pilots love to talk business once. you learned that lingo, it was the same conversation over and over again, so I got on board, even Bob Davis was rushing to Chicago in the taxi and always the same questions about how long I've been with Pan Am, I've been flying about seven years. what position you fly in, correct seat, what is the airline terminology for a co-pilot, what kind of equipment are you in, I had that one down, perfect, in fact, it flew what it flew, I didn't fly, so I had no problems with that and we arrived In Chicago I would go to buy the Pan Am ticket counter, but enough to

catch

the attention of the passenger service representative.

Excuse me, I haven't slept here in over a year. We're still at the Parma House Hilton downtown. low level bus, door three up, went down Parma House Hilton, walked in and in the corner of the check in counter there was a little sign that said airline cruise, which was a three ring binder that you signed, it referenced your flight number, it showed your ID. He would give me a key, I had stayed two or three days and Pan Am would be the direct construction for my room and my meals. You could also cash a personal check at the front desk because you were an employee of the airline, the airline had a contract with the hotel and as a courtesy they would cash your check, but then I found out that all airlines accept personal checks from all employees of the hotels. other airlines, actually a reciprocal agreement is still practiced today in 2007, so at the San Francisco airport a Delta flight attendant can walk. to a US airline ticket counter, show your ID and cash a personal check for up to 100 and vice versa, of course when I found that out I would go to JFK or Lax, I would just go to all the KLM domestic airframes in the northeast.

It took me a good eight hours stopping at every counter in every building when I got to the other end of the airport, at least eight hours had passed. What did you have in eight hours changing shifts to new people, so I went backwards again, as you know, I spent some time posing as a doctor in a hospital in Georgia, I took the bar exams in Louisiana, I passed law, I began working for Attorney General P.F Grimio in the civil division of in the state court where I spent about a year practicing law in the work of a lawyer and doctor, no one doubted for a second that I was not eligible or was not qualified to do so, I resigned on my own and moved on, of course, like any criminal. sooner or later they

catch

you.

I was no exception to that rule. In fact, I was arrested only once in my life when I was 21 years old by the French police in a small town in the south of France called Montpelier. The French police actually arrested me on an Interpol warrant issued by the Swedish police who were looking for me for forgery in Sweden but I thought I was living in France when the French authorities arrested me on that warrant they realized I had forged checks all over France. So they refused to comply with Sweden's extradition order and request, then convicted me of forgery and sent me to a French prison.

I served my sentence in a place called maison diary, the detention house in a small town in the south of France called pepinyan, steven spielberg told barbara walters. For me it was extremely important to go back to that cell, to the exact cell he was in and reconstruct it according to the record books during his stay there, he said to my astonishment that there was a blanket on the floor, there was no mattress, a hole on the floor. to go to the bathroom there is no plumbing or electricity he said according to the record books i entered prison with 198 pounds i left prison with 109 pounds when my sentence ended in france i was extradited to sweden where i was later convicted of forgery in a swedish court court of justice and sent me to a swedish penitentiary in malmo, sweden, when my prison sentence ended in sweden, federal authorities of the united states took my custody and returned me to the united states, eventually a federal judge of the united states in Atlanta, Georgia, I would be sentenced to 12 years in prison. federal prison i served four of 12 years in a federal prison in petersburg, virginia when i was 26 the government offered to get me out of prison on the condition that i go to work with a federal government agency for the rest of my life sentence or until my parole had been satisfactorily completed I agreed and was released this year.

I'm celebrating 41 years in the FBI. I've been in the office for over four decades. I work in Washington DC. I actually make my home in Charleston. South Carolina, so every Monday I fly to Washington about an hour away and fly home Thursday nights. I live in Charleston with my only wife of over 40 years and my three children. My youngest son graduated from Peking University in China. He then he got his master's degree there. Read, write and speak Chinese fluently. He works for a San Francisco gaming company called Glue Mobile. He designs games for the Chinese market.

All of his games are in Chinese and are in the fourth generation of him. like gaming and mobile devices my middle son graduated from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas his degree was in business he and his wife graduated together and he and she own a business in South Carolina and ran that business together my son Major graduated from the University of Kansas at K.U. He went to Loyola Law School in Chicago to obtain his law degree in Illinois and went on to make his father very proud by being an FBI agent. He has been in office for about 12 years, supervises a team that deals with American citizens kidnapped overseas, so they're a response team that operates out of Quantico Virginia, as many of you know, I had very little to do with the movie.

I would have preferred that a movie not be made about my life. In fact, I raised my three. guys in tulsa oklahoma in the same house for 25 years my neighbors had no idea who I was and I would have preferred it to stay that way but steven spielberg told barbara walters that he felt obligated to tell the world the story not because of what I did But because of what I did with my life after that, he loved the redemption side of the story, he wanted the world to know the story, so in the end my family and I were very pleased with the outcome of the story. movie, but we thought of a couple. years, we would all be forgotten and we would move on with our lives.

I never dreamed that Catch Me If You Can would make over a billion dollars for Dreamworks and be shown over and over literally every week on HBO and TV, and then become a Broadway musical and a TV show, so that every Monday morning when I come to work, I get emails from all over the world, someone who is seeing the movie for the first time and sees it to play in a community theater or a high school somewhere and feels forced to write and of course they come from people literally as young as eight sending those emails to people as old as 80.

Most people assume I will never read those emails or see them, but they feel compelled to write and want to make a statement some say you know you were brilliant you were an absolute genius I wasn't nor I was just a kid I had been brilliant had been a genius I don't know if I would have considered it necessary to break the law in order to simply survive and although I know that people are fascinated by what I did about 50 years ago when I was a teenager, I have always considered what I did as something immoral, illegal, unethical and a burden that I live with literally every day of my life and my will until my death there are many who write and say well you know you certainly were gifted you were I was one of those few children who grew up in the world with a dad now the world is the world is full of fathers, but there are very few men worthy of being called dad by their son.

He had a dad who loved his children. He loved life itself. Steven Spielberg told Barbara Walters, the mayor. I researched Frank's youth now without having met Frank. I couldn't help but put his father in the movie through people like Christopher, my father was a man who had four children, three sons and a daughter, every night at bedtime, he would come into your room, he was six and three, He would kneel and kiss you on the table. I would lift the blanket with my cheek and he would put his lip on your earlobe and whisper deeply here I love you, I love you so much, he never missed a night as I grew up, sometimes I would fall asleep before he came home home. but I always woke up the next morning and knew he had been at my bedside years later, my older brother joined me in my room temporarily he was in the marine corps he was 6'4 he played semi-pro football for Buffalo but my father walked around his bed hug him, kiss him Wishman, is he there?

He loved him when I was 16. I was just a child. All 16 year olds are just kids. As much as we would like them to be adults, they are just kids and like everyone else. children need their mother and they need their father all children need their mother and father all children have the right to their mother and father and although it is not popular to say that, divorce is something very devastating for a child and then they will have to deal with the rest of their life natural to me a complete stranger a judge told me I had to choose one parent over the other that was a choice a 16 year old couldn't make so I ran , how could I tell you my life was glamorous I cried myself to sleep until I was 19 I spent every birthday Christmas Mother's Day Father's Day in a hotel room somewhere in the world where people didn't speak my language the only people who associated with me were people who thought they were their partner 10 years older than I really was I never got to go to a high school prom football games share a relationship with someone my age I always knew I would get caught only a fool would think On the contrary, the law sometimes sleeps but the law never dies, they caught me, I went to very bad places, my children grew up asking their mother why dad gets up in the middle of the night and goes down to the TV room because you know he doesn't turn on the TV. and it stays there all night because those are things you can't forget, things you shouldn't forget, well,cyber-related crimes only, so I spend most of my time on breaches.

I've worked every breach up to TJ Maxx 15 years ago and here's what I learned, first, on every one of them. breach every breach occurs because someone at that company did something they weren't supposed to do or someone at that company didn't do something they were supposed to do hackers don't cause breaches that people do and every breach boils down to that , so in the case of equifax they didn't update their infrastructure they didn't fix the patches they should have implemented they were very negligent in what they were doing so the hacker waited for the door to open so when you interview a hacker the hacker will say Look, I can't get into Chase Bank, the truth is they spend about $500 million a year on technology.

Every 12 months they spend $500 million of their profits putting technology and software into their bank to support me. However, they employ 200,000 people around the world, all I have to do is wait for one of those people to do something they weren't supposed to do or don't do what they were supposed to do and that will open the door for me. door to Enter when you steal credit card numbers like Home Depot Target TJ Maxx that is stealing credit cards and debit card information that has a very short shelf life so you have to get rid of it very very quickly but If I steal your name, your social security. number and your date of birth you can't change your name you can't change your social security number you can't change your date of birth so those people store that data for two or three years so we don't even see it surface for at least a couple of years before any of that starts to surface the data that was stolen whatever number they start with, I think it was 143 million, then it became 146 million, it was a million driver's licenses, now that's 10.6 million driver's licenses, all violations Start with very low numbers before they tell you the real number, so there were probably about 240 million pieces of information stolen, but I remind people of all the how long they will store that data, so they must purchase a credit monitoring service for one year.

It's absolutely useless because nothing is going to happen in a year and if you really look at Equifax, they were very unethical in what they did, they thought to themselves first of all, they sold a bunch of shares knowing it was going to come out worse, but then They sat down and said: How can we make a profit from this? It was our mistake, but how did we turn this into profit. So they sat down and said, What we're going to do is offer credit to millions and millions of people for a year. free monitoring service, they will sign up and within a year we will simply say that the data has not appeared yet, you should automatically enroll in our program, which costs twenty dollars a month, so they are going to make millions and millions of dollars with registration automatic in your program um if it has been opened if you have been subject to that violation there are only two things you can do and two things only one can freeze your credit uh each state varies on that so someIn the states, freezing your credit is free.

In other states, there is a fee associated, usually ten dollars, to freeze it. Eighteen dollars to defrost it. Ten dollars to freeze it again. So for the last two years I have testified before Congress and you go to my website at abignale.com and you will see me testifying before Congress telling them that they need to implement a federal law in all 50 states that allows anyone to freeze their credit at any time and defrost it at any time; There should be no reason for it to be so. a fee associated with this because that becomes a deterrent for people, it actually freezes your credit, so you can freeze your credit, that's one thing you can do and then unfreeze it if you need to, if it's not too complicated . and then the only other thing is monitoring your credit, so I've used a credit monitoring service since 1992, so for about 25 years I've been using a service.

I think they charge me like twelve dollars a month, which is why I like it. I can monitor my own credit, I don't need them, all they have given me for that twelve dollars is the ability to access my keyboard in a few movements and have my credit reports instantly displayed on my screen and all three reports appear on my screen from equifax experian transunion at the top is my score for the time of that day what my credit score is at those three agencies, then I can scroll down and look at my credit and I can say to myself, you know, I paid for this car like Four months ago they still show that I owe money to this bank.

I will correct it and I can go down and see every inquiry made about my credit. That's what we call hard and soft queries. That's your employer checking your credit. The IRS. checking your credit your insurance company checking your credit or a credit card you applied for and they are checking your credit so I don't really need them but for a fee they are also monitoring my credit so they are checking my credit and letting me know in real time if someone tries to use my social security number to get a job, open a bank account or whatever the case may be, so for me it's worth using it now, another tip I'll give you. is that I don't have a debit card, I have never had one, I have never allowed my three children to possess one, without a doubt and truly, the worst financial tool ever given to the American consumer, so a long time ago I asked myself a simple question.

How could I eliminate 99.9 of my personal responsibility like that? Because I really don't want to worry about all these things, so I use the safest form of payment that exists on the face of the earth and that is a credit card, credit card, visa mastercard. american express discover card, not debit credit card but credit card every day of my life I spend your money I don't spend my money my money is in the money market account that generates interest no one really knows where it is because it's not there exposed to no one to find it it's sitting there I go to the dry cleaners I give my card I pick up the groceries I give them my card I put fuel in my boat on the weekend I use my card I pay to the marina to keep my boat in the water all year round they put the rent on my credit card I travel all over the world while I wait to be reimbursed I use my credit card if I need euros I go to the ATM I use my credit card I'm not going to use my debit card to get euros abroad or pounds in Britain and every day I use my card and then if I pay the bill in full or part of the bill my credit score goes up so I'm building up credit as I use that credit. card and if tomorrow I will do everything I can to protect my information, but if tomorrow someone gets my card number and charges a million dollars on my credit card under federal law, my responsibility is zero, I have no responsibility, so Yes, I love shopping online. don't use a special card i just use my credit card if they don't deliver the merchandise if they deliver it and it's broken if the host site i went to was fictitious to begin with i have zero zero liability when you use your debit card every time you take it you're exposing the money in your account the only person they will steal from is you when you use your debit card you could use it for the next 50 years 20 times a day you will not raise your credit score by that amount and of course when you use your debit card, you are liable up to a certain amount and it takes a while to fix that debit card, so when we post violation investigations and tell someone in Your Incident, What Happened?

Well, I was on target, but I used a Visa card, so I don't know anything. I have to cancel my card the next day. Two days later, FedEx sent me a new card and that was the last I heard. About you and I used a debit card there that took three thousand dollars out of my checking account. It took me two months to get my money back. Why they said they were investigating. I had to pay the rent. I had children. The enrollment. Everything I couldn't afford. It was because they had my money, so I did it because of that, so I had three kids and I went to college and I told them, I'm not giving you a debit card.

I actually applied for a credit card in his name, so it's your card, of course, you're 18, you have no credit, so I guarantee the card, so as the guarantor of the card, three things happen: one , the bill comes to me and I am responsible for the bill, so if you spend a lot of time. at the bar I'm going to know that two I set the limit on the card, so whatever I want you to spend each month is while you're in school, I'll set that limit in a third place each month I pay, the bill goes to your account. credit, so when you get out of college you should have a credit score of about 800. you want to buy a car, buy a house, buy a condo, you won't need me to do that, my three kids left college with grades of around of 800.

One of the best things you can do for your children is to teach them to learn how to use credit early on and build credit on their behalf. Credit is something very important 30 years ago. that is, if you have the car, you have the house today, everything is based on your credit, the company hires you, they are going to check your credit, if you buy car insurance, they are going to check your credit, you buy life insurance, You are going to check your credit, everything is based on your credit, so you should make sure you maintain good credit.

It is one of the best things you can do with your children. Ask. I wanted to ask you more about the FBI specifically and the type of hiring. and how you got there is a very interesting story. um, you know, when I was younger, I was really interested in, you know, working for the FBI, I worked in fraud and security, um, if my boss is watching, I'm very happy, where I'm right. Now, uh, but uh, I couldn't believe how hard it was to try to get into public service. I thought you know there's, you know I was willing to take a pay cut.

I was willing to move anywhere. I was willing to do anything and it was Hard, I mean I was in contact with people at the FBI and they were super nice and very helpful but I couldn't believe that you know about background checks and there are no jobs available and you have to keep sending me emails and, oh, no. I don't have a law degree, oh that's not going to matter, and you know, I ended up in a great place, so I'm happy, but when people ask me about public service and working for these organizations, I don't really have no interest in the FBI.

It's extremely difficult, we have about 13,000 agents and about 25,000 support people that support agent analysts and things of that nature. We currently accept one in 10,000 applicants to be an agent so it is extremely difficult to get into the FBI so just To share this story with you my oldest son when he was about 14 used to take my kids to the FBI academy which is on a marine military base in Quantico Virginia because I like to shoot guns in the field and I would take them there. While I was teaching, they were there with the instructor shooting on the range and I clearly remember coming back from the base, which takes you about 20 minutes to get from the academy to the base and when we went through the base.

He said: You know dad, this is what I want to do, I want to become an FBI agent. I told him he's great, son, but you know, keep it in mind and he graduated high school. He told me: I really want to become an FBI agent. I said he's great, you know you have to go to college, so he went to school at the University of Kansas, got his bachelor's degree and stayed. I always thought he would change his mind. My wife always had a Christmas party for all the agents in Tulsa that we had. about 200 FBI agents in the state and every Christmas they were at our house with his family and he would go talk to all of them and a special agent in charge who is in charge of the entire state would say, yes, my son I try. to get in, but they turned him away, he explained to him that the children of senators have been turned away, the children of former presidents have been turned away, it has nothing to do with anything but you and I kept emphasizing that to him, but I kept thinking He changed his mind, so when he graduated from college I said, Sonja, I would recommend that you go to law school.

I have no desire to be a lawyer. I told him I understand, but if you really want to work at the FBI, that would put you in a privileged position. a little higher and the chances of getting in you went to loyola law school i graduated from law school the office required you to pass the bar so he took the bar in illinois he passed the bar and then went through the process of a long year it takes to run for office and I was very worried because I was telling my wife that you know I'm a little bitworried because first of all I don't know if anyone in management would like the fact that my son is an FBI agent or maybe someone in management would look at him and say that his father has done a lot for him for them, we have to look at his son, it had absolutely nothing to do with it, it was about him and I always tell him every day he is living the dream of his life, so he came in, but it is very, very difficult, so when the office came to see me and just a few years ago they celebrated their centenary, they made a big coffee table book and they talked about me in there, like the only person who ever did that with the whole office thing back then, the director was Clarence Kelly , who was the director of the office at the time, wanted the capability because he could tell me, okay, you're a lieutenant in the military, you've been in the military for so many years, your experience is this missile, I need you to learn all of this in two weeks and I'll send you to this base and I want you to find out what's going on in this particular area.

He knew that no matter what task he assigned me undercover, I could do it, whether I was a scientist in a laboratory in New Mexico, whether I was a doctor in a hospital. He knew he could get away with it, make people believe that. I was that person without a doubt and that's how they used me. I think that was the initial thing and then of course when I ran out of time, keep in mind when I got that offer it was just an opportunity that I looked at. Well, it's a chance to get out of jail.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I was a different person, that I was a different person when I went to prison. I just saw it as an opportunity to get out of jail, so I was going to do it, but then you get involved with the men and women of the FBI who are obviously probably the most ethical people you'll ever meet in your life. They have a tremendous character. Love for the country. Love for family. That somehow wears you down. and I started to realize that you know, I met my wife and I was becoming a husband, I take care of my wife and I take care of my kids, fatherhood, all those things are what really changed my life, it wasn't that I was rehabilitated or those things changed. my life so it started more as an opportunity so when my time was up and the court said his court order ceases to exist he is free to do whatever he wants I made the decision to stay there just because I thought I could do it. bring a lot to the office, so the office was very smart, they realized from the beginning that it wouldn't be very well accepted and there was a great scene in the movie where Steven Spielberg obviously knew that it was very, very difficult for the agents.

Keep in mind, this was when there were no female agents, no black agents, no Hispanic agents, they were all white agents and they graduated from Harvard or Yale and they all came from very good families and it was a totally different environment. years ago, so everyone had tunnel vision, once a criminal, always a criminal, so they weren't too happy about me getting there, so they showed that scene of me walking in the office and the way when people looked at me. It took me years to change that. It took me years to build their credibility and of course in the first part of my career I was in the field as an undercover so they weren't really dealing with me so when I finished working on the Covers the director then just said: you know what it takes to go to the academy and teach classes so that every agent that comes to the academy is your instructor in one of your courses and everyone knows you, so I have taught at the academy for over 35 years.

I taught my son when I went through the academy. Three generations of agents helped me a lot because they learned who I was from the beginning, they knew who I was and that changed a lot, but it took a lot, a lot of work to change that and build that credibility. I'm curious to know if you continued to fly even after getting out of prison and working in the office like the movie suggests or if that was a bit of Hollywood embellishment, you know when people ask me um and I saw the movie in the theater I've only seen the movie twice, I've seen that trailer a thousand times, but I've only seen the movie twice, so when the media asked me what I thought about the movie and what was right and what was wrong, I said: you know that well, first of all nothing, I have two brothers and a sister that he patrolled and portrayed me as an only child in real life.

My mother never remarried like a scene in the movie where she remarried when she was a child, that didn't actually happen in real life. I never saw my dad after I ran away in the movie, they keep making him come back with Christopher Walken and the movie was nominated. for the academy award for that role of my father that didn't really happen I escaped from the plane but I escaped from the plane through the kitchen gallery where they bring the food and stuff to the plane and there they made me escape through the bathroom and My wife looked at me and said you didn't go to the bathroom.

You said no? I didn't go for the bathroom. So I thought he stayed very close to the story, but basically that was all who he was. First of all, I was very concerned about being accurate because it was the first time I had made a film about a real living person. Secondly, the office had an information officer on set throughout the filming. I'm sure what he said about the FBI and the comments they made and all that was accurate, the agent there was an agent of our information officer on the set and then of course, as he said later, I really got the most of my information from those with three retired agents because he said that their notes were very particular and very precise.

He said that when I filmed the scene in the hotel room I had written the script, so we were sitting there and I said, read me your notes. He said I came in. In the room with my gun in my hand I heard someone in the bathroom I ordered them to get out of the bathroom and this is what happened. He basically loved his notes more than his script, so he used his notes for the movie, so I thought he. I did a good job of keeping the film very, very precise. Just making a final comment about having to deal with cyber.

Now I like to write about crimes in the future, so I always used to write to my class about what we will investigate in five years. Now, what will an agent do in five years? Unfortunately, there is good news and there is bad news. First, the good news. We will eliminate passwords in the next 24 months. Passwords will disappear from the world. There will be no more passwords there. It is a new technology called true sona which t-r-u s-o-n-a means true person. It's a company in Scottsdale, Arizona, that created technology for the CIA that we've used for the last few years.

That technology and I were advisors on that technology for the CIA, so I am an advisor to bring it to the commercial world, but it was the ability of an agent to send data from the field, like Afghanistan, on his iPhone and have Langley know 100% who is the agent on the other end. 100 identify the person on the other end of the device which is a security level four, so they basically said, What if we took this to security level two and removed the passwords? Immediately when they announced that Microsoft gave them 10 million dollars and they said I'm in development, so Microsoft will use it in all their games, in all their access to their computers, etc.

We now have the ability to identify who the person is on the other end of that device and when they go to their website in a certain way, they actually show you how it's done, so they show you demo videos that are three or four minutes long to show you how it's done and that's great, passports are stacked, passwords are stagnant, they should have disappeared a long time ago, that's why they have most of the problems we have today, so it's very important that we get rid of of passwords and in case you don't know, if you take a bank like Bank of America, they spend about six million dollars a month on their call center.

It cost them six million dollars a month to reset passwords, so that would save that bank $100 million a year to eliminate the use of passwords, so that's the good thing and I think it will eventually eliminate social security numbers. I have a number assigned to you for government purposes but when I go to buy a car I go to the doctor, I don't have to give them a number because they already know who I am through my device so I won't have to give them a number. a social security number, so I think that's a good part, but I think cyberspace up to this point has been used for financial crimes or to collect data and information that is valuable.

What will happen, we will see. Cyber ​​very quickly now turns very black, so we have the ability, as you know, to basically turn off someone's pacemaker, but we have to be within 35 feet of them. We test these devices at Quantico all the time, as long as you walk within 35 feet. I take control of whatever body device you have on you, so if I want to kill you I want to speed it up, put it down, I can do it, but I think in five years you'll be able to do it from 5,000 miles away we have the capability now that we've proven that we can pursue a car on the interstate we have to stop 35 feet from the vehicle we take over the vehicle we turn off the engine we lock the person in the car we lock the power windows so they can't open them we can turn their airbag back on in five years, you could do it from 5,000 miles away, so yes, our power grid used as a terrorist tool the ability to shut down an entire system. shutting down an entire banking system, those are all things that we will unfortunately have to deal with in the next four or five years as cyber starts to turn towards the very dark side of cyber, not just stealing information and monetary data , etc.

That's why we're going to have to work very hard to make sure we protect our power grid again. I always remind people that we have the technology to prevent most of these problems, but if we don't use it, then it's worthless. and now we tend to develop a lot of things, I just want to emphasize to you that we develop a lot of things without following them, so one thing that I have done in the government over the last few years is if the government is going to buy a technology, they send me to the technology and they tell me to try to defeat, I just go there and look at their technology, while a CEO says he plays chess with you, you tell him you did this and this and then he tells you that we have a weakness here because I would go in and do this so that build a wall and then he says no, I would still come in here until he says he can't do it anymore, then we know we have good technology, but very rarely. es and I did it with True Sona when we did it for the CIA purpose, but today, uh, and it tells you on the website that I advised on that project and why it was reduced to commercial use, but today what we have is we develop things, so we tell you: here's a device that you put in your kitchen and then you can talk to it to ask what the weather is, what's on TV tonight, all that.

I could easily reverse it and listen to anything you want. Let's say in your house there are so many weaknesses in your home your security cameras or access points your remote control on your TV your Samsung TV your refrigerator that tells you how much milk is in it my thing is I don't really need my refrigerator to talk to my toaster, they've gotten along for a long time without even having a conversation, but what happens is we develop something we're really excited about, we have to get this to market, and sure enough, we never look at the downside in anything I try . to say to a tech company, yeah, this is cool, can you take a little time to say how someone would use this technology in a negative, self-serving way to get us to build the block before we give it to the public?

Use it we would save ourselves a lot of problems. It has been a pleasure spending the morning with you. Thank you very much for coming.