The Machines Are Watching You | And They Know Everything (Compilation)

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Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com slash the Y-Files for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash the Y-Files for free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash the Y-Files. New York City has skyscrapers of all shapes and sizes. But why does this 500-foot-tall, 29-story building have no windows, no lights, and no markings at all? Well, because it's a top-secret NSA spy station built to withstand nuclear war. Whoa! Let's find out why. New York City architecture covers everything. Art Deco, Gothic, Art Nouveau, Renaissance Revival. In the 1950s, a style emerged called Brutalism. And Brutalist architecture is known for focusing on function over form and minimalism. But there's one Brutalist building in New York that's so minimalist that it's been called the most mysterious building in New York. It's 33 Thomas Street, and it's a 500-foot-tall skyscraper with no exterior lighting and has no windows. What 33 Thomas Street does have is secrets. Officially, this is an AT&T telecommunications building. But thanks to leaked documents, we now know that 33 Thomas Street is actually a top-secret NSA mass surveillance hub. Its codename is Titan Point. And right now, as we speak, Titan Point is listening. The 1960s was the height of the Cold War. Everyone thought nuclear war was imminent. So the U.S., desperate to protect its infrastructure, launched a secret project called Project X. Project X? You're kidding, right? No, that's what it was called. Huh. They're usually more creative. The goal of Project X was to build a skyscraper in the middle of New York City capable of withstanding a nuclear blast. The building would be 29 floors, have no windows, three basement levels, and enough food to last 1,500 people two weeks. But its primary purpose was not to protect humans. This would be a fortress designed to protect computers and telecommunications equipment operated by AT&T. For two years, secret documents leaked by former national security contractor Edward Snowden have yielded a steady stream of news reports about U.S. government spying on terrorism suspects, foreign leaders, and American citizens. Now, another chapter has been revealed how telecommunications giant AT&T demonstrated a, quote, "extreme willingness to help the NSA." The building was designed by John Carl Warnecke, and construction began in 1969 and was completed in 1974. The gray granite tower is located at 33 Thomas Street in Lower Manhattan. And locals know the building as the Long Lines Building, and it's been a source of mystery for years. What jumps out is that the building has no windows and no exterior lighting. So during the day, it kind of fades into the background of the New York City skyline. At night, it becomes an invisible shadow. Now, thanks to NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the building is now known as the Long Lines Building. we now know that creating an invisible building wasn't an accident. It was absolutely by design. It's not unusual to keep locations containing vital telecommunications equipment a secret. Hundreds of millions of phone calls and faxes go through 33 Thomas Street every day. But 33 Thomas Street has another level of secrecy. It also appears to be one of the most important national security agency surveillance sites on U.S. soil. A secret monitoring hub that is used to tap into phone calls, faxes, and internet data. 33 Thomas Street operates under NSA codename Titan Point. And Titan Point is a core location used for controversial and possibly illegal NSA sponsored mass surveillance. Now according to leaked documents, this program has targeted the communications of the U.N., the World Bank, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Like the IMF, it's been used to spy on at least 38 countries, including U.S. allies like France, Germany, and Japan. Now it's common knowledge that AT&T is very cooperative with the NSA. If you're using an AT&T cell phone, you might want to rethink that. The depth of cooperation between the agency and telecommunications company AT&T. The documents reveal the company allowed the NSA access to billions of client emails as well as phone call metadata. The emails were accessible to analysts on a keyword search basis. I use a burner. Nice. But because of the Snowden documents, we can now see just how much the NSA and AT&T have been integrated. Any phone call, fax, or piece of data that comes through the network, the NSA can easily capture it. The government knows who you're calling and when. They know how long you talk and what keywords you say. Now, legally, the NSA can only target the communications of foreign nationals. But all the equipment is there. It's already working. So do you think the NSA really stops listening when it determines that you're a U.S. citizen? Exactly. If you could give me a yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? No, sir. It does not? Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, be able to get the information they need to collect, but not wittingly. The code name "Titan Point" is all over the NSA documents, usually found in classified reports about surveillance ops. NSA uses code names to conceal information that it considers especially sensitive. And there are secret NSA travel guides that reveal that Titan Point is actually 33 Thomas Street. But it's not a secret. It's a secret. It's a secret. It's a secret. But you have to kind of piece it together. One guide was written to help NSA employees visiting facilities around the country. And this guide discloses that Titan Point is in New York City. Another travel guide, written a little later, states that an NSA corporate partner codenamed Lithium supervises the site. And Lithium, we know now, is NSA's code name for AT&T. Another document reveals that Titan Point is a short walk away from the FBI field office. In fact, from the front steps of 33 Thomas, you can see the FBI building. It's a very, very short walk. It's about two blocks away. So, yeah, this is the place. Now, when visiting Titan Point, protocol is to arrange your visit through the FBI field office. You should then hire a cover vehicle through the FBI, especially especially if you're bringing in equipment. The NSA would like you to remain in cover during your visit, so please do not display any NSA badge or insignia. Simply ring the buzzer, sign in, have a seat, and wait. Someone will be right down. But what's actually going on inside? Well, if you're a fan of privacy, freedom, and the Constitution, you're not going to like it. Oh, no. In 1975, just a year after 33 Thomas Street was completed, the NSA found themselves in hot water. A congressional inquiry showed that the NSA was spying on anti-Vietnam War activists. That's not legal, is it? It's not. Now, according to the Fourth Amendment, the government can't gather data on you without a warrant signed by a judge. A judge isn't going to sign a warrant without the suspicion of a crime. And being against a war isn't a crime. So rather than bother a judge, they just started collecting data on all kinds of people, like prominent leaders of the civil rights movement, like Dr. King. Muhammad Ali was targeted. Anti-war journalists and columnists working at The Washington Post and New York Times were targeted. Surveilled, spied on. Now, after this scandal, Congress created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which you might have heard referred to as FISA. Now, FISA limits surveillance to foreign nationals and agents of foreign powers. And under FISA, the executive branch must request warrants from a newly formed FISA court. I bet the NSA hated these new rules. They did. Did they at least follow the rules? Oh, man. Law didn't seem to have stopped the NSA. According to an annual report released recently, despite having FISA warrants to spy on only 42 specific terrorism suspects, last year, the National Security Agency managed to collect 151 million American phone call records. What is the NSA doing? And does it justify the massive violation of your privacy? The leaked NSA documents exposed an NSA surveillance program codenamed Blarney. Blarney was established in the early 1970s, and as far as we know, it's still operating. Blarney specifically leverages commercial partnerships, like the one with AT&T, that allows the NSA to gain access to global networks. Blarney is what's called a full-take surveillance program, meaning it collects not just metadata, like who you're calling and when, but full content, like what you're saying and what you're doing online. Now, as of the time of the leak, the NSA had obtained at least 40 FISA court orders for spying under Project Blarney. The targets were major banks around the world. All kinds of companies and 38 countries. They also targeted the United Nations. Did the UN find out? Of course they did, and they weren't pleased about it. But what's the U.S. going to say? The data coming from Blarney was landing in the president's daily briefing. Both Republicans and Democrats. And it's not much of a difference between those two. There's not. But if there's one thing all presidents can agree on is that they love spying on their enemies, both foreign and domestic. No more illegal wiretapping of American citizens, no more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime, no more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. So instead, let's track every citizen. Now, Project Blarney, running out of Titan Point in New York, is one of three key NSA locations that actually captures data from software like Skype and Zoom. And 33 Thomas Street is one of only a few AT&T buildings with an FCC satellite license. So the NSA not only captures data coming through landlines. It also vacuums up data from space. This type of expansive surveillance creates a ton of data that has to go somewhere. So enter Project Skid Row. Skid Row is a program that allows NSA employees to search through huge quantities of user data, like actual emails, online chat, message boards, texts, passwords, even people's browser history. This data is all being collected right now. And how much of that data is legally collected? Well, there's no way to know for sure. There's a lot of oversight. But an agency like the NSA needs to be watched. I mean, remember how the NSA hacked Google and Yahoo and were secretly capturing all the data inside those private clouds? Wait, what? Oh, you don't know that one? Well, that's another video. But always assume that if you're online, you're being watched. Any intelligence service in the world can own that phone the minute it connects to their network. As soon as you turn it on, it can be theirs. They can turn it into a microphone. They can take pictures from it. They can take the data off. Now, AT&T is far from the only corporate relationship the NSA has. The agency has established at least 80 corporate partnerships that we're aware of, but some companies are more cooperative than others. AT&T is notorious for being on very friendly terms with the government. The New York Times and others have reported that AT&T has given billions of emails to the NSA. A range of evidence, including technical terms specific to AT&T, points to the fact that the company is the NSA's partner. The documents refer to the company being highly collaborative and commend its extreme willingness to help. And this has been corroborated by a whistleblower who's part of a class action lawsuit against the NSA. But George Bush simply disregarded the FISA law and approved it all on his own signature, which was totally illegal. I might add that while there are a few dissidents in both parties, like Rand Paul in the Republican side and Ron Wyden on the Democrat side. But I don't think there are dissidents in both parties. The problem with the Democratic side is that both parties approved this when they passed the immunity bill for the phone companies in 2008 with the help of Barack Obama, I might add. And that killed the lawsuit. The case is Juul v. NSA, which was filed almost 15 years ago, and it's still going on. Now, in 2017, a judge ordered the NSA to provide evidence proving or denying that it spied on AT&T customers. Did they provide it? Nah. They appealed. Still in court. Still? Well, it's taken so long. Ah. You know, COVID. I'm getting tired of that as an excuse. Titan Point is just one location. According to the Snowden documents, AT&T has installed surveillance equipment in at least 59 U.S. locations. And on any given day, NSA employees are on site gathering data. Now, what's crazy is that until this leak, most AT&T employees probably weren't aware of the NSA's presence. NSA operatives are instructed to. Blend in with other workers. They would simply show up, go into an office or a server room and go to work just like everybody else. All of this should be pretty chilling. America's secret agencies firmly subscribe to. It's better to ask forgiveness than permission. And the NSA, CIA, the FBI and others are very willing to bend the rules, interpret and even break laws to suit their purposes. All in the name of national security. Now, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, when you trade liberty for security, you end up with neither. And there are many other companies like AT&T, Google, Facebook that cooperate with the government with such a lack of friction that any American citizen should be concerned. Those long agreements that you sign online without reading them every once in a while. Read one. Take note of how many of your rights you're surrendering for the convenience of being able to post pictures of your cat or leave a mean comment on a video as we willingly surrender more of our privacy to digital conglomerates. We're also surrendering freedoms like the freedom from illegal searches and spying, like the freedom to criticize the government, the freedom to publicly disagree with popular ideas. We are guilty of being complicit in this erosion of our freedoms. And once freedoms are fully eroded, well, that's called slavery. I can't promise we're not already there. But I have it as machines are watching. You they see your every move. Private eyes machines are watching you. Oh, hey, welcome back. OK, so maybe during that first episode, you thought, yeah, the government listens and asparagus makes your tinky stinky. No, duh. But what if I told you the spies don't just listen? They also talk back through creepy little robot voices on the radio, reading numbers into the void like a haunted auction. This next one is about numbers. Number stations, coded broadcasts, secret messages and proof that sometimes the scariest thing in the static is somebody whispering instructions. Since World War One, numbers stations have been transmitting coded messages to spies around the world using shortwave radio, and they're still transmitting right now at the height of the Cold War. Radio listeners around the world started to know. To notice strange broadcasts starting with a weird melody or tone, these transmissions were followed by the unnerving sound of a woman's robotic voice counting in German, where the creepy voice of a child reciting letters in English. Now, these transmissions sound strange to casual listeners, but to the right set of ears, they contain information that could change the course of history. In fact, number stations have changed the course of history. Let's find out why. Welcome to the Y-Files, where cool nerds laugh and learn. Hey, are we going to talk about this? What? Hello, who's the new guy? What's he talking about? Am I new? No, Space Panda, you're fine. Shh! Anyway, even though we're in the age of satellites and broadband Wi-Fi and cyber warfare, it could be that the old-fashioned radio is the real tool of the New World Order. If you want to conspire with spies, governments and Illuminati, right, so if your plan is to oppress the masses, you don't to leave a digital trail so instead you broadcast encrypted details of your evil plot over shortwave radio also known as number stations you may have heard that number stations are a relic of the past but number stations are active and being used right now we're going to listen to a few in this episode one of the best known number stations was the lincolnshire poacher named after the folk song played as an identifying signal three nine seven well that's pretty creepy it is a couple of radio nerds slash heroes use direction finding equipment to triangulate this station's location the transmission was coming from a royal air force base in cyprus this station is believed to have been operated by mi6 from the mid-1970s all the way to 2008. one of the creepy stations ever was called swedish rhapsody it used a child's music box and a child's voice to read numbers in german this number station was operated for almost 50 years by the polish secret police no that gives me chills you can get chills underwater hey do me a favor will you what don't hush my buzz and my favorite number station of all time is yosemite sam whose voice is played as part of the transmission the broadcast begins on one of several frequencies then 10 seconds later it's repeated on the next higher frequency and so on and so on for a total of two minutes the entire pattern takes exactly two minutes and always begins seven seconds after the top of the hour spies need to be punctual each broadcast starts with a data burst lasting 0.8 seconds followed by the voice of yosemite sam saying i'm gonna blow me out of never you kidding me nope that's a numbers station broadcasting from a government contractor in new mexico don't tell me they're connected to lockheed martin well great the two amateur radio operators slash heroes tracked down the source of the yosemite sam broadcasts in february 2005. the tower was located at the mobility assessment test and integration center also known as matic and this was part of a factory owned by laguna industries located near laguna new mexico the guys went down there and took photographs of a compound containing buildings towers and antennas but quickly fled when they were approached by a security guard yelling at them to not take any pictures just three hours later the broadcast stopped and have not been heard since what did laguna industries have to say about it oh laguna industries removed all references to matic from their website and now that website is on not suspicious at all okay so what are number stations well number stations are simply shortwave radio transmitters generally operating between three thousand and thirty thousand kilohertz they're located in many countries all over the world but no one really knows how many there are the stations sometimes transmit numbers spoken by a computer generated voice which is how number stations got their name but other broadcast morse code compressed data bursts or beloved cartoon characters now some stations have been broadcasting for decades and many have gone quiet since the end of the cold war what now the cold war is alive and well my friend well it's not a very enlightened point of view now wake up fur face i beg your pardon if you're dumb enough to think it's like yours sir i don't know what to tell you because we've been in one war or another for the past hundred years and there's no sign of us forgive me uh do continue oh yeah do continue you anyway countless number stations are on the air right now for what purpose do you really know and the people that do know they aren't talking one anonymous intelligence agent from the uk said number stations are exactly what you think they are and that's all i'll say about it so in almost every country a license is required to broadcast but number stations aren't licensed they're essentially pirate stations operating illegally but nobody shuts them down and no government acknowledges they even exist that's because number stations are the government okay normally i'd call hecklefish a kook for saying that yay oh but this time he's right i'm always right about this stuff amateur detectives radio buffs and investigative journalists have been studying number stations for years and there's enough information out there that we can assume that these transmissions have a single purpose espionage all the messages are encrypted that they became digits and the digits would be sent over as in groups of five shortwave radio is old technology in the late 1920s it was a popular way to communicate over long distances because of the way the waves travel which is called propagation space panda ah the earth's ionosphere is a region of space between 80 and 600 kilometers above the surface shortwave radio energy can bounce high off the earth's ionosphere and come back down to the earth sometimes over and over again this allows the signal to travel great distances oh don't you two make quite the team this is called sky wave or skip propagation with a decent radio you can tune into a strong shortwave signal from the other side of the planet now that's pretty useful if you're an intelligence agency and you need to send secret messages to agents and assets in the field also computerized messages can be hacked tracked and traced but no one can trace who's receiving a shortwave radio signal and it's hard to find the source of a transmission and if you know the right frequency anyone can eavesdrop on an international spy network including you you can find tons of frequencies online and i'll link to some websites in the description now what you'll hear depends on the station some stations broadcast constantly others power up schedule time so agents in the field know when to tune in you're going to hear a lot of spanish spanish spanish spanish spanish spanish czech chinese hebrew but you know where most of the spy stations are i know you're not going to say russia yeah oh yep authentic yep now the broadcast you'll hear on number stations vary but they generally begin with an alert signal and this alert may be a simple tone or it could be fragments of a song such as the lincolnshire poacher the swedish rhapsody all kinds of other ones and this alert indicates to listeners that a message is about to begin and also gives a few seconds to tune in the radio for the best reception after the tone is usually a set of spoken numbers or letters often four or five at a time which are repeated again and again before moving on to a new set there are a lot of variations on the same structure many stations have received nicknames that reflect the station depending on what's being broadcast names like the buzzer cherry ripe the spanish lady uh the russian woodpecker was a great one atatürk yosemite sam and swedish rhapsody i'll have a whole bunch more in the description now sometimes broadcasts are really clear but other times atmospheric conditions can degrade the signals and sometimes intentional jamming from other countries creates enough interference on the frequency that makes transmission difficult to understand so to compensate many stations like yosemite sam will hop around to different frequencies tradecraft the coded structure of the messages indicates that these messages are indeed secret and intended to avoid detection the question then is how do spies understand these messages when no one else can that was a static filled triple scrambled microwave transmission between two soldiers talking in mandarin chinese well the chinese were only using a simple polyphonetically grouped 20 square digit key transposed in booster vedonic form with multiple nulls so even though they're very low tech number stations are still in use because unlike computer code these transmissions are unbreakable nothing is unbreakable these messages might be so what's so hard about deciphering a few numbers actually it's nearly impossible here's how spies in the field encode and decode their messages first you start with a block of randomized text that's your one-time pad key then take your message here we're using the name jimmy smith two five-letter words then you have a cipher chart this is a grid of a to z and zero to nine on the x and y axes now set up your message matching the first five letters or jimmy with the first five letters from the pad then match up the word smith with the second set of letters okay now find the first letter of your message on the x-axis then find the letter underneath on the y-axis where the axes intersect that's your coded character repeat this for all your letters and your message is ready to transmit to decrypt the message set up the coded characters in groups of five match those up at the pad then find the first letter of the key on the y-axis then move across until you hit the coded letter the character at the top of the grid is your decoded character and thanks to vhs blog for setting this up awesome so both the sender and receiver immediately destroy the key at the end of the transmission so even if someone else intercepts the numbers which i have without the key they have no way to decode the hidden message this also means there's no relationship between past or future messages so there's no pattern to use in breaking the code to fool cryptographers the numbers must be really really random and creating truly random numbers is actually really difficult even for computers but once in a while the broadcasts are less than professional the person reading the code may make mistakes or there could be laughing in the background. Cuban number stations in particular are known for their hilarious missteps. Sometimes they've had such poor transmissions that they're impossible to hear or they accidentally pipe music from Radio Havana onto the airwaves. I would hazard to guess they are more foreign intelligence officers inside the U.S. working against U.S. interests now than even at the height of the Cold War. Some number stations have illicit uses. Drug lords and other criminals use shortwave to avoid international authorities. This is especially true in the U.S., where many intercepted signals are broadcast in Spanish. Since they don't have government oversight, the execution is pretty sloppy. Right, because the government is never sloppy. The government is never sloppy in its execution. The fish does make a good point. But those number stations are pretty rare. Espionage is the most common use. There are even some very public and recent examples of this. In 1983, the KGB uncovered a CIA agent posing as a Soviet diplomat who was receiving orders from American numbers broadcasts. Another well-known case is the 2001 Cuban Five case, where Cuban spies were caught and shortwave broadcasts were used in the case against them as evidence. Also in 2001, Ana Montes, who worked for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, was arrested and convicted of spying for Cuba. Investigators searched her home and found a shortwave radio, along with a code sheet that was used to encrypt radio transmissions. Now, she exposed the identities of covert operators in Cuba, and her information was directly responsible for the death of at least one American soldier. Maybe more. In 2016, CNN called Montes "the most dangerous spy you've never heard of." Although, now you've heard of her. And to this day, and despite this mountain of evidence, no government or intelligence agency has ever officially admitted to using numbers stations. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments, it's weeknight dinners. Sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. Today we're going to be discussing a radio set. Not just any radio set, but a Russian radio set. So you don't need a radio to listen to spy communications. You can listen to the entire shortwave band online, and I'll link below. Because these receivers are operated by software, they can be used remotely by everyone in the world. And here's what one of those tuners looks like. Now, if you're not a radio nerd, that might look a little weird. But if you want to dig in further, I'll link to a tutorial up there and down in the description. I'll also link to Priam.org's station schedule, which is super cool. It lets you tell exactly what number stations are coming on the air and what frequency you need to listen. Now, I'm thinking about doing a live stream of this, so if you want to see that, let me know in the comments. Now, if you just want to binge station broadcasts, you can go down a whole rabbit hole with the Conette Project. The Conette Project was an independent initiative to record, catalog, and inform the public about the secret transmissions that are around us in the air every day. You can even download the files as MP3s for free. You can even download the files as MP3s for later analysis. Ooh, I'm going to need a pencil, my tinfoil hat, and a tall glass of whiskey. I'm sorry, but do you have any sherry? Oy vey, give me a break. The quantity of number stations has dropped dramatically over the past few years. Still, the broadcasts continue. Now, are they feeding invaluable information to operatives on crucial missions? Or are they just holdovers from government agencies protecting their budgets? Both. Probably. It could also be that governments maintain control of the air. the stations for readiness purposes. If the power grid or internet goes down, a shortwave transmitter just needs an antenna and a diesel generator and they could be on the air broadcasting around the world. But as communication technology continues to evolve and digital encryption gets harder to crack, we might finally see the end of number stations. Or maybe the opposite will occur. Maybe some catastrophic digital apocalypse will create a number station renaissance, pushing broadcasters back onto the front lines of international intelligence, where random numbers raining down from the ionosphere can once again change the course of human history. This is reality, and it's creepy. But sometimes in a silly way. Kind of like a sleepover with John Malkovich. You don't feel unsafe, but it definitely doesn't feel right. Anyway, while you're busy worrying about satellites, smartphones, I present you something more sinister. Something maybe hanging around your block? A wire. Did you know there's an 18-mile-long power grid? Did you know there's an 18-mile-long string of wire circling the island of Manhattan? Every morning, the wire is checked for breaks and snags, and every day it's repaired. And it costs about $150,000 a year to maintain. The wire has been there for years, yet most New Yorkers, myself included, didn't even know it was there. Let's find out why. To understand why there's an 18-mile-long wire going around New York City, we need a quick lesson about the power grid. To understand why there's an 18-mile-long wire circling the island of Manhattan, we need a quick lesson about the power grid. a hat and show the okay okay take it easy and show my shadows over here anyway on the sabbath you can carry things within your home so grabbing a glass of water from the kitchen is fine but you can't carry anything from your home to a public place now this is tricky if you want to leave your house and lock the door behind you you aren't permitted to carry your keys and what if you have an infant you can't carry a child or even push a stroller and if you need a cane to walk no can do and if you think this sounds inconvenient you're not the only one many years ago rabbis realized that in order to fully enjoy the sabbath you sometimes needed to carry things and this is where the wire around new york comes in it's called an a-roof and an a-roof is an unbroken continuous string or wire that circles a large public area now originally a-roofing were actual walls but now they're symbolic walls and anything within the borders of the a-roof is now considered part of the domestic domain which means if you want to carry things from your home to a public you want to carry on saturday as long as you're within the a-roof you're good to go if i were a rich fish all day long i do do do if i were a wealthy fish in the 1990s there were only a few arovin in the united states but now there are hundreds if you live in a medium-sized city there's probably an a-roof or two in your neighborhood and if you live in a big city there's definitely at least one the most expensive a-roof in the world and the one with the largest population is the mayroof in manhattan and it began as a small community enclosure in the upper west side and now it covers almost the entire island of manhattan what area isn't covered hell's kitchen checks out every morning a rabbi drives the entire length of the wire and notes places where it could be broken then on thursday and friday he goes out with a construction team to make sure the wire is repaired and it costs about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year to maintain this the manhattan a-roof has survived vandalism two hurricanes even one really aggressive thanksgiving day float damn you spongebob it's had a couple of close calls but for over 20 years the a-roof has remained intact so there's an almost invisible wire running around almost every major city city in the Western world, including 18 miles around Manhattan Island. And now you know why. We're never alone now. There always seems to be a bunch of tech around. The beating of my heart is just another sigh hound. At this point, I'm feeling pretty good inside Cage Against the Machine. I'm coming, I'm coming. Nothing getting in, no trackers getting out, no smart toaster narking on me to the cloud. But then I hear the next weapon the machines use might not be a signal at all. It might be sound. Frequencies you can barely hear, waves your body can feel, and invisible attacks that turn the air itself into your enemy. Good. Great. Grand. Wonderful. It's all about the fear frequency. Who the hell are you? Have you ever wondered what ghosts sound like? In the early 1980s, Vic Tandy was working at Warwick Labs in the UK, where he designed medical equipment. And there were rumors among the staff that the building was haunted. But Tandy figured this was related to the constant sound of life support systems that were operating on site. But one night Tandy was working late when he started to feel strange. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He broke into a cold sweat and felt this sense of dread wash over him. His heart started to race and he had the very specific feeling that he was being watched. Then out of the corner of his eye, he caught the glimpse of a gray figure drifting across the room. He turned around and the figure was gone. Absolutely terrified, Vic Tandy bolted from the lab and raced home. Now, after he calmed down, he vowed to find a logical solution. A logical, scientific explanation for what happened. Well, Vic Tandy got to his office the next day and started looking around for the ghost. He didn't find one, but he did notice something strange. He was an avid fencer and in his lab he had a foil locked in a vice. Wait, he sold stolen merchandise? No, that's a fence. Fencing is a style of sword fighting using a foil. A sword made out of foil? A foil? A foil is the type of sword. I'm so confused. It doesn't matter. Anyway, a foil was locked in a vice and Tandy noticed it was vibrating really quickly, even though nothing was touching it. Now, it turns out a fan was recently installed in the lab and was causing a sound wave to bounce between the walls, and the wave's intensity was focused in the center of the room, which was the location of the foil and where he was standing when he saw the ghost. Tandy calculated the frequency of the sound at about 19 hertz. Frequency is important. The range of human hearing starts at 20 hertz, so Tandy's fan wasn't audible. It's what's known as infrasound, but just because we can't hear it, doesn't mean it can't affect us. All material objects have a natural resonant frequency, and if the object is exposed to a sound wave of this frequency, it'll vibrate in response. This is called sympathetic resonance, and you can test this. If you strike a key on a piano in one room, a piano in another room will resonate that same note. This is also why running your finger around the piano is important. If you strike your finger around the rim of a glass at just the right speed, we'll produce sound. Now, back to Tandy's lab. It turns out that the human eye resonates at about 19 hertz, so what appeared to be a ghost was actually Tandy's eye vibrating at the frequency of the fan. Since this frequency has an actual physical effect on the body, the sound was causing a sense of fear and anxiety to employees in the area, and Tandy said that when they switched off the fan, it was like a huge weight was lifted. And these frequencies don't just affect humans. Researchers have discovered that just before a tiger attacks, its roar contains frequencies at 18 hertz, which could disorient their prey long enough for the tiger to move in for the kill. Just under 20 hertz has been called the "fear frequency" for how it affects mammals, and lots of horror movies have used sounds at or just above the fear frequency to make their films scarier. What happens if we go lower? Lower than 18 hertz? Yeah. Things get much worse. How much worse? Uh, ever hear the brown note? The brown note? Does that mean what I think it means? Grab a diaper. Oh no! The brown note is said to occur at frequencies between 5 and 9 hertz. This is the hypothetical range of sound that supposedly causes humans to lose control of their bowels. I say hypothetical because nobody has been able to actually prove it yet. The brown note was famously busted by Adam Savage on Mythbusters when he surrounded himself with giant speakers and had the note pumped into his body. Now, he didn't feel so great afterwards, but his diaper stayed clean. He actually wore a diaper? Yup. I love Mythbusters. Me too. But here's the thing about that experiment. Air really isn't a great conductor of sound, especially at low frequencies. But when you're physically connected to the vibration, its effects are much more intense. The United States Space Program conducted tests that transferred brown note and other frequencies directly to subjects' bodies by vibrating cockpit chairs. Now, test frequencies range from 0.5 hertz to 40 hertz, and power levels of 160 decibels. Is that loud? Well, for comparison, a lawnmower is 90 decibels, a chainsaw is about 130, and a gunshot is 140. So testing people at 160 dB, even if you can't technically hear the sound, is going to get results. Test subjects experienced nausea, hallucinations, difficulty breathing, and involuntary motor functions. Now, it's hard to say who actually crapped their pants, but this experiment is probably where the urban myth came from. But you don't have to be an astronaut to get sick from sound. There's something called wind turbine syndrome. Now, not everyone, but a little over 20% of people who live near large wind turbine farms report all kinds of negative effects. And they range from difficulty concentrating all the way up to extreme stress and uncontrollable migraines. In one instance, an air traffic controller almost caused a fatal plane crash because he was driving near a wind farm. Now, there have been about 20 studies done on wind farms, but they found no link between the turbines and the people getting sick. Who conducted these studies? The wind turbine companies. Uh-huh. I thought so. Still, it has been proven that people who live and work near a lot of noise experience higher levels of stress and have more cortisol in their blood than people who live in quiet environments. So if we know sound can be dangerous, could it be used as a weapon? I'm going to go with yes. The most dangerous frequencies to humans are at about seven Hertz. This is the median alpha rhythm of the brain and the resonant frequency of many of the body's organs. Well, what does all that word salad mean? This means that at high enough volume, these sounds can directly affect the central nervous system, causing panic, convulsions, vomiting, and with long enough exposure, organ rupture and death. And one of the most well-known inventors of infrasonic weapons was a Russian born French scientist named Vladimir Gavro. Now, Gavro. He became interested in sound research in 1957 when he was asked to cure an unknown illness that was affecting people at a research plant in Marseille. Now, Gavro tracked the problem to air conditioning units that were generating low frequency sound. When the units were turned off, the problem suddenly disappeared. So Gavro began experimenting with acoustics to create a weapon for the French military. A big shock. Whenever we discover something dangerous, turn it into a weapon. That does seem to be what happens. Gain of function. So Gavro developed a few prototypes. And according to reports, one of the researchers died instantly. And Gavro wrote, "His internal organs mashed into an amorphous jelly by the vibrations." Even people at nearby labs were sick for hours. They said every organ in their body was vibrating: hearts, lungs, stomachs, everything. These weapons used infrasound, which are frequencies below human hearing. But what about frequencies above human hearing? That's called ultrasound. They're dangerous. There are two ways that ultrasound damages the body. The first is that sound waves can actually heat up human cells, which causes all kinds of problems. The other is something called cavitation. When sound waves pass through an object, they rapidly push and pull on that object. This is called compression and refraction. When ultrasound causes human cells to cavitate, it creates bubbles in the tissue. And this is exactly what happens to divers suffering from ultrasound. It's the same thing that happens when a person suffers from decompression sickness. The bends! Right. The bends. Ultrasound is such an effective weapon that it's been used by the US Navy to repel pirates. So the US has used sonic weapons against its enemies. But have the enemies of the US used sonic weapons to attack Americans? Turns out they have. A strange illness has been afflicting American intelligence officers and diplomats in Cuba, and it's now known as Havana syndrome. And this summer, the CIA reported it. Officers were experiencing symptoms while traveling to India, and two US officials visiting Hanoi suffered unexplained health incidents. And recently, German officials confirmed that they were investigating an alleged sonic attack against the US embassy in Berlin. So what does Havana syndrome feel like? Well, it's described as someone suddenly experiencing a broad range of symptoms like migraines, anxiety, dizziness, lapses of memory, and cognitive disruption. Some people described that they feel like they were hit by a blast wave or a beam of energy. In some cases, the symptoms were brief. But other people experienced such devastating effects that they required hospitalization and long term care. The first cases of Havana syndrome were reported in 2016 when Canadian and American officials arrived in Cuba. CIA officers stationed at the embassy there reported feeling fatigue, nausea and pressure headaches. And brain scans showed tissue damage that's normally seen in people with concussions after being in a car accident. The issue was so serious that the Obama administration evacuated the embassy. And what did the Cubans have to say about it? Oh, they had no idea what could be happening. But since then, Havana syndrome has been reported by U.S. officials all over the world, Cuba, China, Russia, Colombia, Uzbekistan, even the United States. And last year, two White House staff experienced symptoms while working at the White House. Now, according to investigators, the illness could be the result of a sonic weapon or exposure to high energy microwaves. Another study done by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine said that directed pulsed radio frequency energy could be responsible. Many intelligence officers. Are quietly pointing the finger at Russia, but no evidence has been made public yet. And what did the Russians have to say about it? They deny any involvement. As of now, there's still no official explanation. But the CIA and State Department have prioritized getting to the root cause of Havana syndrome. Oh, they're always trying to get to the root cause. They are. Do they ever find it? Yeah. I would cry if I could cry. Uh, I mean. Moo. Milk me. So they can watch us, listen to us, send secret messages, hide wires over our heads, and maybe blast our brains with spooky sound beams. But here's the part that makes my tail go numb. What if the powers that be don't need to force you to do anything? What if they just nudge you a little bit? A word here, an image there, a sound, a symbol, a message buried so deep you don't even know you saw it? That's subliminal warfare. Mind control and invisible wind fluence. Now you belong to them. Saddam Hussein met with his generals in Basra on January 27th, 1991. He was pacing back and forth, and he was furious. Six months earlier, Iraq had invaded Kuwait, and the world responded with a relentless shock and awe campaign. The coalition's 2,000 daily air attacks had crippled Iraq's defenses and destroyed its air force. Hussein's plan to draw coalition troops into a costly ground war had backfired. Instead, Iraqi soldiers were surrendering by the thousands. These were battle-tested troops in one of the world's largest armies, laying down weapons without firing a single shot. It was maddening. An officer handed Hussein a report about a radio transmitter. In Khafji, Saudi Arabia. He dismissed it as Western propaganda, but his officer asked him to keep reading. There was an intelligence document attached. It said the FM transmitter in Khafji was broadcasting subliminal messages that were making Iraqi troops surrender, using mind control. Hussein ordered the tower destroyed within three days. His officers pushed back. The town was lightly guarded for now. But taking it would be a suicide mission without air support. They didn't even know if this mind-control weapon was real. It could be another American lie. Hussein stopped pacing. Three days, he said. His tone left no room for discussion. Major General Salah Mahmoud saluted, took a deep breath, and reached for the phone. Marine Corporal Jesse Colvin was at Observation Post 4 scanning the dark horizon. OP4 was on top of the police station in Khafji, a small town in Saudi Arabia. Colvin wasn't expecting to see much. The coalition had air supremacy. If Saddam Hussein did so much as toss a paper plane from a window, there'd be F-15s on top of it before it reached the ground. Still, Iraq had plenty of ground forces in the field, and the Saudis asked the U.S. for support. It was about 2,100 hours. 8 p.m. Yes, thank you. No problem. It was about 8 o'clock, and it was a quiet night. Colvin only heard the wind coming off the Gulf and the occasional crackle of the radio. Then Colvin heard a rumble that, at first, he thought was thunder. He aimed his night-vision binoculars north. Tanks. And troops. He couldn't believe it. It took him a second to process, and then he grabbed his radio. We're sighted. Multiple vehicles approaching from the north. Over. Colvin didn't get a response. We're deep. Contact. Contact. Enemy armor approaching from the north. Over. Still, no response. The radios worked earlier, so Colvin assumed the radios were being jammed. He grabbed his M-16 and headed downstairs. His unit wasn't prepared for an attack of this size. Ninety minutes later, air support arrived, but it was too late. The Iraqi army took the city. Whether they could hold it or not didn't really matter. They accomplished their mission. They brought down the FM radio transmitter. The Marines at Khafji thought this attack was crazy, and they weren't prepared for such a large offensive. Of course, they had no idea what they were guarding. Iraqi intelligence was right. The United States had deployed a subliminal weapon. Can humans be controlled subliminally? The answer, of course, is a big yes. And you won't be surprised to know that advertisers were the first to jump on this new technology. For your convenience, we have an attractive refreshment stand in the lobby. With buttered popcorn, golden good, and hot from the popper. Your favorite candies, wholesome and rich with a flavor treat for every taste. Ice cream and other good things to eat. For six weeks in 1957, families in New Jersey, went to the movies, had a fun night out, and went home. Totally normal. They had no idea they were exposed to what was later called a startling kind of invisible advertising. A mechanism had been attached to the film projector. It flashed messages on the screen every five seconds. Each message only appeared for one three-thousandth of a second. Too fast to be seen by the human eye. But that was the point. The goal was to have these messages, bypass the conscious brain, and register directly in the subconscious. 1,400 times over the course of two hours, the audience saw, well, their subconscious mind saw, calls to action, like, "Eat more popcorn." Over 45,000 movie patrons were exposed without their consent or knowledge, and popcorn sales jumped 58%. Ad agencies went into overdrive, and new companies were launched in the subliminal space. "Grease." Radio stations WAAF in Chicago and WCCO in Minneapolis tested subliminal ads to see if they increased sales. They did. "Rease." American television networks implemented the technology into their broadcasts. It worked. "Rease." What are you doing? "What? Me? Nothing." Whispering "raise" is not going to make me give you a raise. "I don't know what you're talking about." But when the public learned that they were being manipulated without their knowledge or consent, there was a huge backlash. The Hollywood Reporter called it an "obscene violation." The LA Times and Washington Post flat-out called it "brainwashing." Within a year, theaters, radio, and television broadcasters banned subliminal advertising. Now, of course, banning flashing images wouldn't stop consumers from being unconsciously manipulated. No one realized it was already happening, and it was very successful. "Rease." You stepped on my cliffhanger even after I told you to stop? "Well, I'm busting my hump in this bowl, and I think I deserve a little more scratch." Well, if you want a raise, then maybe you earn it. You don't just jump in and ruin the best part of the scene. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease. Leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier. So you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with Nordstrom. moments still add discover it all in nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com in the late 19th century sigmund freud popularized the idea we are motivated by our unconscious unconscious motivation is used in product marketing all the time because it works marketing expert ernest dicter used a freudian technique word association to test consumers he wanted to know not what they bought but why he learned that moms bought candy for their kids as a reward for good behavior in the grocery store so he had stores move candy right next to the cash registers they're still there today sanka was a decaffeinated coffee brand that attacked regular coffee in its ads but consumers love coffee and felt sanka was insulting coffee drinkers so instead of attacking regular coffee sanka changed its slogan to now you can drink off the shelf and drink coffee at home now you can drink off the shelf and drink coffee at all the coffee you want and you can drink it as strong as you like drink five ten cups a day as many as you like at any time you like that's for sure sales went through the roof bill friedman was a gambling addict who used his experience to shape how most casinos are laid out now once you're in you can't see any exits you can't see any clocks you can't see outside at all these tactics disrupt our sense of time there is constant noise even if the floor is mostly empty this is designed to keep you in a heightened state so you don't get tired most casinos offer players free alcohol this reduces inhibitions and after all those free drinks you need to use the restroom but you have to weave your way through slot machines to get there yeah that's why i keep my own restroom right here what why aren't you moving you're going right now aren't you what no my in your business gross what i wash my things in a casino there's no direct route to anywhere especially an exit now a lot of this is common knowledge it's slippery but not dishonest like changing a slogan or laying out a casino it's out in the open edward bernays was a pioneer in public relations and propaganda he used tactics that were not out in the open he manipulated public opinion in ways that were entirely out of context for him he was a pioneer in public relations and propaganda he used tactics that were not out in the open he manipulated public opinion in ways that were entirely unconscious it makes sense bernays was good at talking to the subconscious he was sigmund freud's nephew whether it's to sell more paper cups that we work with or to make people more honest or more virtuous depends on public consent and so we worked out the engineering of consent his first campaign was in 1929 he influenced the entire nation without their knowledge he was so good he influenced you and you never knew it new york city april 1st 1929 it was noon on fifth avenue and the easter parade was packed one of the best attended in history the event signaled the beginning of a new modern era the cars were new fashion was cutting edge and cameras filmed the parade for the first time a group of young women used this as an opportunity to put on an outrageous display something unthinkable something women have never done in public yo baby we're getting spicy bow chicka bow bow the women strolled along the parade smoking cigarettes oh oh they smoked after the outrageous display huh uh what did they do was there leather involved oh please tell me there was leather uh no smoking was the outrageous display oh well that's disappointing and what is it with you in leather don't kink shame okay never mind bow chicka bow bow in 1929 women smoking in public was unacceptable it just wasn't done but these ladies didn't care about tradition they wanted the freedom and equality to smoke in public just like men so they did suddenly cigarettes were called torches of freedom and the demand for cigarettes among women exploded women saw cigarettes as symbols of independence and freedom they had no idea the whole thing was staged those weren't rebellious women fighting for equality they were actresses hired to play a part edward bernays orchestrated the whole scene for his client the american tobacco company the movie was about to hit cinemas it was a good movie it was a good movie bernays was so good at manipulating consumers he's affecting you to this day up until the 1920s americans ate a light breakfast toast juice coffee that was it this was especially true for what they called brain workers folks who sat in offices all day then in august 1922 an article appeared in the new york times sometimes health advice is pleasant requiring no work no self-denial an interesting sample is offered in the medical review of reviews it queried doctors in 46 states three out of four physicians advise eating a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs articles like this were all over the country doctors suggesting bacon and eggs for breakfast this was a new and decadent idea people loved it only there was no science behind the claims these articles were all over the country doctors suggesting bacon and eggs for breakfast this was a new and decadent idea people loved it only there was no science behind the claims only there was no science behind the claims no study the whole thing was propaganda coordinated by edward bernays the beechnut packing company wanted to increase bacon sales so bernays surveyed 5 000 doctors and asked them if a heavy breakfast was better than a light breakfast he published the results making sure bacon and eggs were mentioned every time doctors described the ideal breakfast doctors that didn't think bacon was a good idea well they got no ink bacon sales exploded and american culture changed forever to this day 70 of all bacon is eaten for breakfast though it can be enjoyed at any time of day for any occasion i can't deny that oh bacon nature's candy bernays proved he could influence the behavior of an entire country his success landed him a new client a big one they asked bernays to do the impossible overthrow a foreign government so bernays would change history again but this time he'd do it for the cia jacobo arbenz was elected as guatemala's president in 1951 and it brought hope and optimism to the nation his platform of social reform and economic development resonated with the people but not with the united fruit company united fruit was an american corporation guatemala's largest employer and landowner its banana plantations generated twice the revenue of the entire country they wielded immense power this is where the term banana republic comes from in 1952 arbenz's government passed a bill requiring the transfer of unused land from large landowners to poor farmers with compensation by the government the united fruit company refused the normal solution would be to lobby the arbenz government and reach a compromise but united fruit wasn't looking to compromise they wanted to win so they hired edward bernays who went right to work bernays flooded american media with articles portraying arbenz as a dangerous communist it was a lie in his inaugural address arbenz promised to convert guatemala from a backward country with a feudal economy into a modern capitalist state but the lie worked this was the cold war a communist threat was just 1300 miles from u.s soil the american people demanded action and the cia was more than happy to oblige the cia launched operation pb success in 1954. they funded and trained a rebel paramilitary force on june 18th the liberation army seized control of the government forcing arbenz into exile carlos castellar mas was installed as a u.s-backed military dictator the first of many turmoil in central america first there was nicaragua then el salvador now comes guatemala for 40 years guatemala suffered brutality terror death squads and political instability the human rights violations during this time are so graphic i can't tell you what they are and whatever you're guessing it's worse 93 of these crimes were committed by cia trained operatives 200 000 dead another 200 000 fled 1 million people lost their homes but the united fruit company's profits were not as high as they had been in the first half of the 19th century the profits were safe thanks to america's master of propaganda an interesting little insight into this covert action one the u.s ambassador to the united nations henry cabot lodge had personal stock holdings in united fruit company the assistant secretary of state john lodge had personal stock holdings in united fruit company the secretary of state john foster Alistair Dulles, his law firm did legal work for, I believe it's the Schlafly Bank, which held the papers on the Guatemalan Railroad, which was owned by the United Fruit Company. And the CI director, Alan Dulles, was his brother, also was a member of the same law firm with this indirect financial interest in United Fruit Company. Robert Binns was not a communist and there was not a single communist in his cabinet. Bernays proved you could subconsciously control a person's opinion, but the U.S. military intelligence apparatus wanted more. They wanted to subconsciously control a person's actions. The subliminal was about to become weaponized. Psychological operations, or PSYOPs, are a standard part of U.S. military operations. The Army Field Manual even calls them vital. The term PSYOPs sounds mysterious, but the tactics are usually nothing more than distributing leaflets or broadcasting propaganda over the radio. The goal is to influence enemy behavior using information instead of bullets and bombs. In the thick of the Vietnam War, with American casualties mounting, leaflets weren't going to cut it. But the Army had a plan. A powerful new tool that could directly target enemy troops: the squawk box. The squawk box was a sonic weapon that used specially designed speakers mounted on armored vehicles and helicopters. The human ear can suffer damage from sound over 85 decibels. The squawk box could deliver a devastating shriek at 120 decibels from two and a half miles away. Vietcong soldiers were instantly incapacitated by the intense sound. They suffered pain, nausea, and often permanent hearing loss. But the squawk box could do more than inflict physical harm. The Army discovered that sound waves could manipulate emotions, inducing distress and confusion in the enemy. The results were staggering. Between 1967 and 1968, an estimated 30,000 Vietcong surrendered to U.S. forces. Despite its success, the squawk box had, according to the U.S. Army, an enormous impact on the enemy. This was a critical flaw. The enemy could hear it coming, literally. The Army wanted a more deadly and discreet weapon, something the enemy couldn't see or hear. Sound waves couldn't do it, but electromagnetic waves, they absolutely could. In 1961, microwave technology was becoming part of daily life. Humans had just hit the market, and low levels of microwaves were used in lots of different devices. Biophysicist Alan Frey began studying microwave effects on humans to make sure there were no health risks. He placed subjects in a shielded room and exposed them to different microwave frequencies. At 1,310 megahertz, something strange happened. A subject asked about a clicking sound, but the room was silent. It was shielded from the outside, and there were no moving parts involved in this experiment. Frey discovered that frequencies between 200 and 3,000 megahertz caused people to hear sounds that seemed to come from inside their heads: clicks, knocks, buzzes, and chirps. He could beam sounds directly into the brain without implants. Scientists started using this to train animals, making cats change direction with just microwave pulses. "I'd like to make cats change direction right into oncoming traffic." Stop that. "Well, you better tell your demon fur babies to keep their filthy mitts out of my bowl." Okay, settle down. The CIA wondered, could this technology affect an animal's heart rate? More specifically, could they induce a heart attack remotely? Frey experimented with frog hearts and pulse-modulated radiation. He was actually disturbed to find he could increase a frog's heart rate with no device attached. He did it remotely. Soviet scientists had similar results with rabbits. By 1972, the Soviets moved to human trials. A declassified report revealed they had done over 500 studies on how microwaves affect human behavior. Both lethal and non-lethal effects were found. The mention of lethal effects was a horrifying new detail. They didn't mean to kill their subjects, but they discovered they could, and those survived exposure could be remotely controlled. The US Army loved it. They immediately ramped up research on microwave radiation. They ordered trucks capable of carrying microwave broadcasting equipment. The goal was to irradiate and immobilize the enemy. In 1976, the Navy finally discovered how Soviet scientists were accidentally killing people. They were using microwaves powerful enough to generate heat. Soviet scientists called it "microthermal effects." If you own a microwave oven, you call this "microthermal effect" cooking. The Russians cooked people? Yup. I bet you taste like chicken. That's gross. Oh, oh, oh. Eating human is gross, but eating fish is okay. Hmm. Ah, see what happens when the shoe's on the other fin? Fair enough. Ah. J.F. Shappitz was a trusted black ops scientist who worked for the Department of Defense. He tried broadcasting commands into a subject's mind. It worked. Using low-power microwaves, he could make subjects hear words inside their own heads. The military told Shappitz to go further. They wanted to send commands to a person's subconscious without them hearing the command. In a second round of experiments, one subject was bombarded with microwave radiation. Then something odd happened. He got up from his chair and left. He actually left the lab. Now, this was allowed. The subjects weren't prisoners. But this had never happened before. A little while later, the guy returned with a can of soda. Shappitz asked him why he left in the middle of the experiment. The man said he was thirsty, so he went to the store for a cold drink. Shappitz smiled. The experiment worked. This subject had been programmed to feel thirsty and to go to the store for a soda. It was hypnosis using microwaves. But hypnosis doesn't work on everything. It only works on the human body. It's just that there are so many different ways to feel thirsty. You can't just go to the store for a cold drink. You can't just go to the store for a soda. But hypnosis doesn't work on everyone. thoughts and emotions by matching the frequency and ramping up the power. It worked. He discovered he could sync with an animal's brain waves and trigger the release of behavior-regulating chemicals. We could put animals into a stupor. We got chick brains to dump 80% of the natural opioids in their brains. We got rats to release histamine. Histamine is released in response to allergens, dust, pollen, mites. Histamine also causes a cascade of inflammatory reactions. Bird was thrilled. In humans, this would cause instant flu-like symptoms and produce nausea. You would disable a person temporarily. It would have been like a stun gun. Bird used the phrase, would have been, because his project was shut down after two years, despite being approved for four. He was onto something groundbreaking. He suspected the program wasn't shut down. He believed it was moved to black ops. And he was right. In 1982, a U.S. Air Force report contained an ominous warning. Understanding the brain as an electrically mediated organ suggests that impressed electromagnetic fields are capable of directing behavior. Further, the passage of 100 milliampere through the myocardium can lead to cardiac standstill and death. The U.S. Air Force was secretly continuing Bird's brainwave research. They hired Dr. Ross Adie to weaponize it. Adie began by implanting transmitters into animal brains. These devices didn't receive information. The implants sent out information. Adie compiled a library of frequencies and their corresponding mental and physical states. Then he turned the animals' brainwaves against them. By broadcasting certain frequencies back into their brains, he could manipulate their behavior and their emotions at will. Eventually, he refined the technique to work without implants. It was time to test the technology on the human brain. He placed the subject's head in an active electromagnetic field and tuned it to a specific frequency, depending on the result he wanted. In one experiment, he turned the machine to induce theta waves. Our brains produce theta waves as for falling asleep. The subject of the experiment fell asleep. The technology for a revolutionary new weapon was born. Now, it was time to build it. A device that can manipulate a person's thoughts and emotions sounds like science fiction. At best, it sounds like pseudoscience. But not only does such a device exist, but it's been patented. Although the full schematics are classified by the US government. Patent number 5159703, issued to Silent Sounds Incorporated, describes something called a silent subliminal presentation system. The device maps electrical brain activity corresponding to specific emotions. These emotional signal clusters are identified and logged to create a database of emotions. Human brain waves are then cloned and enhanced. You select a desired emotion, fear, despair, hopelessness, and the system can transmit it. The emotional triggers are carried by the Silent Sound Spread Spectrum, or S-QuAD, a subliminal carrier technology that operates at either very low or very high frequencies. The key is that it's inaudible. And what makes this system more practical and more dangerous is that S-QuAD can be transmitted using a carrier frequency like ordinary radio or television. - Yeah, what you talking about, Willis? - Okay, let's say you want someone to feel sad. You grab the brain wave frequency for sadness from your database. Then you layer that inaudible sound wave on top of an audible sound wave, like an FM radio wave. So the target hears the radio broadcast, but doesn't realize a second wave hitched a ride. That second wave syncs with the target's brain, triggering sadness, or whatever emotion you want. According to the patent, the resulting emotion is overwhelming. Now the patent insists that this is not a weapon, but it does note the waves are subliminal and undetectable. That makes them dangerous. Silent Sounds Inc. claims to focus solely on positive emotions. But in 1996, the president of Silent Sounds couldn't stop himself from bragging about the device's true purpose. - While the schematics are classified by the US government, we are allowed to say we work with governments around the world. The Germans, even former Soviet Union countries. - And then he let the big one slip. - The system was used throughout Operation Desert Storm quite successfully. - The US military had achieved subliminal mind control and deployed the technology in Iraq. And many Iraqi troops died trying to stop it. - In 1991, Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait with a huge army, nearly 500,000 soldiers. - It was the fifth largest military in the world. And they were battle tested from eight years of war with Iran. - So it sounded like wishful thinking when the Bush administration said they wanted Iraqi troops to simply lay down their arms and go home. Huh? Why would they do that? Because the US military had a new, secret weapon. A radio station in the small town of Khafji. If you tuned into the station, you'd hear music or news, like any radio station. But embedded in the radio transmission was a signal that mimics a brainwave frequency. Specifically, the frequency that creates the feeling of hopelessness. And it worked. Entire battalions laid down their arms. Iraqi tanks flew white flags. They simply lost the will to fight. American troops rolled up their sleeves, rolled into Kuwait, heavily armed and ready for battle. Iraqi troops were waiting patiently. Thousands of them. One Marine said they were surrendering so fast they could hardly keep up. The war seemed to be coming to an end. That's why it was a surprise to the Marines in Khafji when around 8:00 PM on January 29th, Iraq's 5th Mechanized Division attacked and took the town. This was a much needed propaganda victory for Iraq, but it didn't last. - I would tell you, I don't think that battle is over by a long shot. I expect a lot more fighting will probably occur tonight. - Two days later, American air power overwhelmed Khafji and the 5th Mechanized Division was completely wiped out. But they destroyed the transmitter that was subliminally making Iraqi troops surrender. So they accomplished their mission. Or did they? US government officials deny any of this ever happened and are adamant that such a system does not exist. Former Navy weapons research director, Charles Bernard was asked about it. - I have yet to see one of these ray gun things that actually works. And DARPA has come to us every few years to see if there are ways to incapacitate the central nervous system remotely, but nothing has ever come of it. That's too science fiction and far-fetched. - Okay, so it's just a conspiracy theory. The CIA did not use FM radio to transmit subliminal messages. That's the official position. But here's something strange. A ceasefire agreement was reached that allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power. This brought a lot of criticism of the Bush administration, but the purpose of the war was to free Kuwait, not overthrow the Iraqi government. - Our goal is not the conquest of Iraq. It is the liberation of Kuwait. It is my hope that somehow the Iraqi people can, even now, convince their dictator that he must lay down his arm in arms. - But on March 1st, 1991, one day after the ceasefire, a revolt against Saddam Hussein's government broke out in Basra. The rebellion spread to every major city in Southern Iraq. Up to 100,000 Iraqis were killed. A no-fly zone was established. So what caused this sudden rebellion? A radio broadcast called "The Voice of Free Iraq" encouraged the revolt. That radio station was in a small town in Saudi Arabia and operated by the CIA. Some say this is just a coincidence, that no subliminal weapons exist. Maybe. But there are others who believe that not only does this subliminal technology exist, it was deployed in Iraq for a specific purpose. It was a test run for something bigger. The following year, a facility was built in Fairbanks, Alaska. The project was run by DARPA and had a huge budget. The Department of Defense built a high-powered transmitter that could send electromagnetic pulses into the ionosphere and anywhere in the world. It's called HAARP, but that's a different episode. - I was caught in the middle of a server rack. - Thunder. - I look around and I knew there was no white hat. - Thunder. - My mind raced. And I thought, what could I do? - Thunder. - And I knew there was no help, no helpful CPU. - Thunder. - Sound of C-E-D-E-R-O-M-P-S. This might be the only Faraday case that's more dangerous inside than out. Anyway, since apparently the machines weren't satisfied messing with your phone, your ear, or your subconscious, they decided to look up and say, what if we also controlled the sky? This one gets into Tesla's stolen ideas, secret antenna fields, weather mods, and the kind of machinery that makes a beaver build a bunker. Because if the heavens are compromised, buddy, we may have run out of places to hide. - A blinding flash lit the Siberian sky. The explosion was 100 times more powerful than Hiroshima. It flattened 80 million trees across 830 square miles. No crater appeared. No meteor fragments were found. Scientists struggled for decades to explain what happened at Tunguska. Thousands of miles away, Nikola Tesla smiled in his Wardenclyffe Tower lab. His Tesla ray had worked perfectly. When Tesla died in 1943, government agents seized his research. Decades later, HAARP appeared in Alaska, 180 antennas beaming energy into the ionosphere. The military calls it research, but declassified documents tell a different story. What would have been Tesla's greatest gift to the world became the world's most powerful weapon. - This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still ahead. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com. In 1901, Nikola Tesla built Wardenclyffe. The 190-foot tower on Long Island wasn't for radio signals; it was for wireless energy transmission across the planet. And this wasn't theoretical. Tesla demonstrated wireless power at the 1893 World's Fair. He lit phosphorescent tubes without wires. The crowd was amazed. Tesla believed Earth could conduct electricity like a circuit. The secret was the ionosphere, an electrically charged atmospheric layer starting 50 miles up. By pumping electromagnetic energy into this layer, he could create a planet-wide resonance system. A planet-wide resonance system? Oy vey. Hello, tech support? Yeah, my human is speaking nerd again. I need a translation. Well, think of it like pushing a child on a swing. Guppy. Think of it like pushing a guppy on a swing. Small pushes timed right create large, sustained motion. Tesla wanted to push the ionosphere. The ionosphere at a frequency matching the Earth's resonance. This would create stable waves circling the planet. Earth resonates at 7.83 hertz, and this was proven in 1954. Tesla suspected this, but wasn't certain. He needed financing to continue. J.P. Morgan initially funded the project, but withdrew when he realized Tesla wanted to provide free electricity worldwide. Morgan asked, "If anyone can draw on the power, where do we put the meter?" Without Morgan's support. Tesla was ruined. In the 1930s, Tesla announced "teleforce." The press called it a "death ray." Tesla said it can generate an invisible wall of energy capable of destroying aircraft and armies from hundreds of miles away. We have a whole episode on Tesla's death ray and Wardenclyffe Tower if you want to learn more. Death ray linked down in your love luggage. When Tesla died in 1943, the U.S. government, in particular, responded fast. His body was so warm as his entire legacy was packed into government crates. Tesla's dream died with him, but his research lived on, in the hands of men who saw not free energy, but unlimited power. Tesla's technical documents were sent to an M.I.T. professor for review. That professor was Dr. John Trump, the future president's uncle. Dr. Trump, also a National Defense Research Committee member, said Tesla's research contained nothing valuable. That wasn't true. I don't want to make America lie again. The military quietly continued Tesla's work. Some research went to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. This was a top-secret operation launched in 1945 to study Tesla's Particle Beam weapon. Project Nick's details remain classified. The project was officially abandoned, but particle beam research continued. DARPA launched Project Seesaw in 1958. Like Project Nick, Seesaw was heavily funded for years, and like Project Nick, Seesaw was quietly shut down. During this time, Tesla's particle beam technology disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to it. Then, years later, DARPA and the U.S. Air Force built an expensive, secret facility in Alaska. The technology there would look familiar to Tesla historians. The military claims the facility is only for research. But that's not what the patents say. In 1987, physicist Bernard Eastland filed a patent titled "Method and Apparatus for Altering a Region in the Earth's Atmosphere, Ionosphere, and/or Magnetosphere." The patent described a facility that could heat specific ionosphere portions using radio waves. Eastland wasn't working alone. Arco Technologies funded his research. Arco owned Vast Natural Gas Reserves in Alaska's North Slope. They had no buyers. They saw Eastland's invention as a way to convert their gas into something valuable – power. And Eastland's technology needed lots of power. Arco originally approached me in 1984 to find a use for the natural gas on the North Slope of Alaska, which they could not sell. To give you a feel for how much gas they asked me to find an application for, it was enough gas to produce all the electricity in the United States for a full year. The technology is straightforward. Powerful radio signal is transmitted into the ionosphere, targeting a specific region. This energy excites charged particles, heating them and altering their properties. The heated region acts like an optical lens, but instead of bending light, it bends and redirects radio waves. This includes radar signals and natural currents in Earth's upper atmosphere. This is like inserting a resistor into a global electrical circuit. The lens could create effects thousands of miles away from the transmission site. It could also be a source of energy. Within a year of Eastland's patent filing, Arco was awarded a contract to build a similar facility in Alaska. When locals read about it in the March 1988 Omni magazine, they grew concerned. The military insisted they were building a research facility, nothing more. They didn't. They looked up Eastland's patent and the language was crystal clear. Patents in the patents included destroying missiles, communications control and disruption were included. There were some other ideas both to possibly modify weather and finally to lift a portion of the upper atmosphere further out into space where hopefully it would be able to deflect missile trajectories. Those are Eastland's own words. This wasn't an invention for ionospheric research. As harp rose in the Alaskan wilderness. The military's intentions were obvious. They weren't just studying the sky. They were weaponizing it. There are several high-powered radio antennas around the world. But in relation to harp, they're like a child's cap gun compared to a 50-millimeter cannon. When locals discovered what DARPA and the Air Force were building in Alaska, they demanded answers. The military admitted to building antennas that could affect the atmosphere, but insisted they use technology different than Eastland's patents. Hang on, hang on. Let me see if I follow. Go ahead. Tesla dies. The government steals his plans for a death ray machine. They lose their plans. Then, by some miracle, they find a guy who patents a bunch of stuff based on Tesla's death ray machine. So they give him money to build this harp thing, but they're not using his stuff. They're using some other stuff, and it's all fine. Nothing to see here. Does that about sum it up? But. Eastland later confirmed the military's interest in his work. Before his death in 2007, he said, "Harp is the perfect first step toward a plan like mine. There are powerful people involved. The military never sleeps." When you look at the other patents built upon the work of Eastland, it becomes clear how the military intends to use a harp transmitter. It could give them a tool to replace the electromagnetic pulse. It could give them a pulse effect of some atmospheric thermonuclear devices still considered an option by some planners. It can replace the huge, extremely low-frequency submarine communication system. It could replace the over-the-horizon radar system once planned for the current location of harp with a much more accurate system. The technical similarities between harp and Eastland's patents are obvious to engineers. By 1993, DARPA and the Air Force had built a machine that could turn weather into a weapon. And they were excited to show off their new toy. The statement that there is no association between the ionosphere and surface weather is an outright lie. We can artificially influence the Earth's aurora with a relatively small amount of energy, and we know that outbursts of the northern lights do change weather patterns. This is evidence that upper atmospheric events affect lower atmospheric weather, and vice versa. In 1996, the U.S. Air Force published "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025." This wasn't science fiction. It was a military assessment of weather modification as a combat tool. The paper stated, "Weather modification will become part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally. It could have offensive and defensive applications, and even be used for deterrence purposes." Weather warfare isn't new. During Vietnam, the U.S. conducted Operation Popeye, cloud seeding to extend monsoon season over enemy supply routes. They called it making mud, not war. I had a military nickname. shoot operation names. It's like naming a guillotine Mr. Snippy. For years, the idea of creating rain with electricity was a conspiracy theory. But then. But then. Dubai, Dubai is making it rain in a sweltering desert by zapping clouds with electricity using drones. Fascinating, isn't it? Critics argue HAARP's power is too low to affect global weather. A lightning bolt contains one billion watts. A hurricane releases energy equal to thousands of nuclear bombs. How could HAARP compete? Well, the answer is chaos theory. Weather is a chaotic system. In chaotic systems, small changes trigger larger events. The classic example is the butterfly effect. We're not playing pub trivia. Sorry, sorry. Go ahead. HAARP's designers understood chaos theory. They didn't need to match nature's power. They just needed to know where to apply the pressure. A butterfly's wings can start a tornado. And HAARP was the most powerful butterfly ever created. What they're not paying any attention to is what's happening to the ionosphere. If they pick the right frequency to push that plume out into space, that energy may discharge back out of the ionosphere, back down the radio beam, and strike the Earth. And it would be about a hundred times the energy released out of a thunderbolt. Picking up now. Holy fuck. That's a lot of energy. Meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz presented this concept in 1972. And his point was something as small as a butterfly could set off a series of events that eventually lead to a tornado. History is full of butterfly effects. Hitler wanted to be an artist, but he was rejected by the art school in Vienna. He chose a different path. On August 9th, 1945, the city of Kokura was supposed to be hit with an atomic bomb. But it was too cloudy to find the target, so Nagasaki was chosen instead. HAARP doesn't need to match nature's power. It needs a tiny precise nudge at the right place and time to trigger catastrophe. By 1977, weather manipulation was such a concern that the UN banned it through the Environmental Modification Convention. The UN specifically addressed HAARP in 1999, again calling for a ban on technologies that can alter the environment for military purposes. No. The UN issued multiple resolutions calling for transparency, oversight, and international monitoring of facilities like HAARP. Did the United States military, uh. Oh, never mind. In 2002, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed concern about geophysical weapons that could alter the weather. He was talking about HAARP. Then Russia and China built their own ionospheric heaters. They saw the military value. An arms race nobody talks about is happening above our heads right now. But HAARP had another ability more powerful than changing weather. By pulsing radio waves at specific frequencies, HAARP created low-frequency waves that penetrate deep into the Earth and oceans. What's most scary and exciting about HAARP is the potential of its application. For example, ELF waves generated by the array could be used for a variety of military applications, including finding underground bases, tunnels, even caves. The government is interested in HAARP technology because it's a new frontier, a new way to solve an old problem. These waves oscillate between 1 and 100 Hertz, precisely within natural atmospheric resonance. Then scientists wondered, what would happen if those energy waves were directed not at the atmosphere, but at fault lines deep within the Earth? When scientists examine earthquakes, they focus on two factors: tectonic stress and resonant frequency. Every object vibrates at a natural frequency: metal, rock, your body. Exposing an object to its natural frequency amplifies vibrations. And sometimes vibrations grow so strong, they damage the object, like sound shattering a glass. This is called resonant frequency-induced material failure. It works on large objects, too. A famous example is the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940. Wind hitting the bridge at its resonant frequency created vibrations that tore it apart. The Earth's tectonic plates also have a resonant frequency. Fault lines are cracks in the Earth's crust that build up enormous tension as they move against each other. The right trigger can release this tension. The left trigger can release this tension. this HAARP explains. - It has the ability of affecting the frequency following response, which is where the brain locks onto an external signal, begins to mirror it, and brain chemistry changes. - So even simpler than that is HAARP can control minds. - Absolutely can control in the sense of changing mental function. - Begich is called a conspiracy theorist, but FFR is proven science. And you know who proved it? The US military. In the 1980s, Dr. Michael Persinger conducted research partly funded by the US Navy. He showed that weak electromagnetic fields applied to the temporal lobe could induce altered states, including religious experiences and hallucinations. When exposed to an external frequency, the brain tends to synchronize with it. This is why bright flashing lights can trigger seizures in some people. - Oh, is this why every time I'm in a dentist's office, I suddenly know all the lyrics to "It's Raining Men"? - Uh, I don't think so. - Oh, good. Hallelujah. Amen. - The European Parliament takes this technology seriously. Resolution A4005:1999 specifically mentioned HAARP while expressing concern about manipulative capabilities affecting human health and psychology. The resolution called for transparency regarding HAARP's ethical implications. - Does the United States military listen to the EU? - No. - Nuh-huh. - Because HAARP uses the ionosphere, it could influence mental states of people over large areas. It could cause hallucinations, alter emotions, induce seizures, all without their knowledge. HAARP officials deny mind control allegations, but the CIA denied researching mind control, too. Then MKUltra was exposed and showed the CIA was exploring the exact same technology. Other countries weren't paying attention, but in 1998, a Russian military journal published "The Mind Has No Firewall." It was later republished by the U.S. Army War College. The article warned the human mind is vulnerable to electromagnetic intrusion. Mind control technology is not science fiction. It's science fact. And as the United States continues to refine its capabilities, other world powers are racing to catch up. The United States is the only country in the world that has a human mind. It could halt oil pipelines, destroy water treatment plants, and bring down entire power grids. This virus was called Stuxnet, and we should all be concerned. Let's find out why. In January 2010, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were visiting the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in Iran. They noticed that the centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium gas, were tearing themselves apart. One after another. Hundreds of them. Nobody could figure out why. Not the inspectors, not the Iranian technicians who worked on site, not even the engineers who built the system. Meanwhile, a computer security firm in Belarus got a strange request from a client in Iran. Their machines were rebooting over and over again. Even completely wiping the hard drives and reinstalling the operating systems didn't help. Again, the problem was a mystery. But when the technicians pulled apart the operating systems, they found a new and very unusual virus. They called it Stuxnet. And Stuxnet was infecting computers all over the world and spreading fast. Now, these events seemed unrelated at the time, but they were very much connected. Cybersecurity experts knew Stuxnet was an ordinary malware thrown together by some basement hacker. The first clue was the size of the code base. Most viruses are 10, maybe 20 kilobytes. Stuxnet was 500 kilobytes. And uncompressed, it was 1.2 megabytes. That's a pretty large piece of code to go undetected. Then analysts transferred Stuxnet to a new computer just to see what would happen. Now, the test computer was not your grandma's old Compaq laptop from 1997. The machine was a state-of-the-art, highly protected workstation designed for cybersecurity threat detection. All the bells and whistles. But as soon as the Stuxnet files were copied over, the new computer was immediately infected, without anybody doing anything, and without triggering a single alert. And that's very unusual. When you install software in your computer, it needs to be digitally signed with a trusted certificate. And the developer supplies a certificate that your computer checks against trusted manufacturers - Apple, Logitech, whatever. A lot of viruses tamper with the signature of the certificate to try to trick your operating system into allowing it to install. Now, luckily, virus protection usually catches this. And you've probably seen that warning when you're trying to install software. That's not from a trusted source. This catches a lot of nasties. But Stuxnet didn't have altered certificates. It had valid certificates stolen from two trusted sources: Jmicron and Realtek. Now, these companies make all kinds of drivers for hard drives, USB sticks, sound cards, tons of stuff. And you probably have their software on your computer right now. I definitely do. And when the creators of the Stuxnet worm signed their files with a stolen cert, they wanted to make sure that Windows worked. The developers would install it very quietly, without any warning. And if anyone bothered to look at the cert, they wouldn't care because it was valid. Now, stealing a valid digital signature is like trying to rob a bank vault that's locked inside another bank vault. The security around them is sci-fi, spy-movie-level stuff. They had to physically steal the certificate from inside these companies. That really doesn't happen. But it happened. So more digging around, the code showed that as soon as Stuxnet infected a computer, it started probing the system, looking for flash drives, USB sticks, and other storage devices. And because of the signing certificates, Windows happily allowed it to do so. What security experts had discovered is one of the rarest and most dangerous kinds of software vulnerabilities. And it was at this time that they went from curious and amazed to fearing for their lives. Look, I'm not suicidal if I show up dead on Monday. It wasn't me. What security experts had discovered is called a zero-day exploit, and it's called this because when a vulnerability is unknown to the software developer and Microsoft and the antivirus community and the rest of the world, that means there are zero days of protection against it. Nobody knows about a zero-day vulnerability except the attacker exploiting it. A zero-day is so rare and valuable that you can actually sell it on the darknet for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not a good idea. It's not. It's a one-in-a-million occurrence. Cybersecurity companies research over 12 million viruses a year. And in that time, they might find maybe 10 or 12 zero-day exploits. It's a once-in-a-million occurrence. But Stuxnet contained four zero-day exploits. This is unheard of. It never happened before, and it hasn't happened since. Eventually it was discovered that Stuxnet wasn't trying to steal passwords or data. It was actually targeting the software on Siemens' programmable logic controllers called PLCs. Now, PLCs are small computers used in factories and industry that control pretty much everything. Assembly lines, water pumps, power plants, and nuclear refining. Critical infrastructure runs on PLCs. If you can hack a PLC, you can take down an entire country without firing a single shot. Now, this had people very nervous because industries all over the world were reporting their PLCs were infected with Stuxnet, but it was just sitting there. Nobody knew what it was going to do or when. Was the power grid just going to turn off? Was water or gas going to stop flowing? Nobody knew. It felt like a ticking time bomb. Because it was. Even though the virus was spreading all over the world to thousands of computers per day, it was primarily targeting one country, Iran. More specifically, it was targeting the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz. That doesn't sound like an accident. It wasn't. A virus this complex and this dangerous requires millions of people. Millions of dollars to create. It takes time, the best programming talent in the world, and absolute secrecy. Experts at first suspected, and then they were positive, that Stuxnet could only have been designed by a country looking to cripple or wage war against another country. This was a state-sponsored attack. To design and deploy a cyber weapon like Stuxnet, you need immense financial resources, a military intelligence infrastructure, and a motive to wreak havoc on an enemy nation. So what country created it? We do, but they won't admit it. So who made this thing? You're not going to like it. Oh, sh-- An intelligence agency, probably. Probably. Who has an interest in setting back the Iranian nuclear program. Yes. Stuxnet was aggressive, but very quiet. If Stuxnet is on your computer and you plug in a USB thumb drive, boom, the USB drive is immediately and quietly infected. You don't have to run a program, open a web page, or click anything. You then plug that USB drive into a different computer on a different network, boom, every machine on that network is infected. And this is exactly what happened in Iran. The nuclear centrifuges at Natanz were air-gapped, meaning they weren't connected to any outside network. And this is usually a good way to keep a network secure. The only way to infect a clean air-gapped network is-- User error. Yep. User error. Outside contractors who were brought in to work-- Inside contractors who were brought in to work-- Outside contractors who were brought in to work-- By the time Iran agreed to suspend its enrichment program, diplomatic talks would break down and they would go back to work. Then they would stop again and start again and it went on like this for a while. But then the CIA received thousands of pages of documents indicating that Iran was modifying the nose cone of a missile to carry a nuclear warhead. Oh no. Oh yes. Then it was discovered that Iran had acquired and hidden from inspectors blueprints for more advanced centrifuge tech. Iran claimed that these documents were forged, but later admitted that they had secretly imported equipment from a foreign source. Now by this time, Israel was getting fed up and threatening military action. Now bombing Iranian nuclear facilities might have been a short-term solution, but almost certainly would have led to war in the region and perhaps globally. Oy vey, not another war. Yep, another war. So the U.S. intelligence community, including NSA, CIA, and the newly formed U.S. Cyber Command got to work on what they called Operation Olympic Games. Olympic Games was a campaign of cyber intrusion, disruption, and sabotage of Iranians. Wait, wait, wait, wait. The U.S. government created Stuxnet? What? I haven't given you enough clues? Well, I was just so enthralled with the story, you see. I appreciate that. Now officially, no country has acknowledged developing Stuxnet. It's generally believed that Stuxnet was developed by the United States with help from Israel, the U.K., and their allies. Dumb question. Go ahead. When you destroy something with a bomb or with a virus, isn't it the same thing? Well, funny you should ask that. It's an act of war. Please, let's be frank here. Okay. Countries are constantly hacking each other. They're spying on each other, looking for information, and most countries have agencies and protocols to protect against this. It's a game of intelligence, cat and mouse. It's been going on forever. But Stuxnet was the first time a nation-state developed proactive offensive weaponized code that could do actual physical damage to another country. If a nuclear reactor could be destroyed from the inside, what other real-world damage could Stuxnet or other malicious code do? If you attack a power grid or a water supply. lots of people are going to die. So Iran felt like this was not a simple covert act of espionage, but a blatant act of war committed by the U.S. and its allies. What did they do about it? Well, what would you do? Fight back. And that's exactly what they did. Iran sent out a virtual call to arms and quickly built one of the largest state-sponsored hacker groups in the world. They got to work. They attacked Saudi Aramco, the largest oil company in the world, and destroyed every computer they had. 30,000 machines' hard drives were wiped clean, phone lines were down, email offline. It was a nightmare. Oh, no. Then they went for America's financial infrastructure and levied attacks against Wells Fargo, PNC, and Bank of America, taking down banking systems all over the world. And there were other attacks. Now, Iran didn't officially take credit for these attacks, but then again, they didn't really have to. The message was clear: come for us, we'll come for you. Now, PLC attacks did happen before Stuxnet. Viruses have destroyed power generators, dumped raw sewage on cities, disrupted railways. There was even an attack in the '90s against Worcester Airport in Massachusetts that grounded flights for a day. But those attacks were done by single hackers and disgruntled employees. When you have the resources of an entire country deployed for state-sponsored attacks, the world becomes a much more dangerous place. But now that we know about it, we're safe from Stuxnet, right? For years, cyberattacks on our nation have been met with indecision and inaction. The internet has been a great equalizer. Any information available online is available to everyone, everywhere, forever. Now, you can't buy a tank or a bomb online. Hello, Darknet? Okay, the Darknet is different, and we have an episode coming up on that. So while you're waiting for it, hit the like and subscribe, all the buttons. But don't try to buy a tank on the Darknet. What you can find online are plans in blue. And if you want to buy a tank, you can buy a bomb on the Darknet. Like, how can citizens who are threatened by cyber attacks attacks, have an honest conversation about these dangers when our own governments don't acknowledge they participate. How can one country ask another to disarm when it won't disarm itself? But the biggest question of all, how can the global community ensure that destructive cyber weapons like Stuxnet and Nitro Zeus don't fall into the wrong hands? Don't create them in the first place. That would be a good start. Until there's a global effort to address this threat, all we can hope for is that our governments can keep us safe and hope our leaders can avoid another international crisis. That's a lot to hope for. The cyber war is here, and now I find myself longing for the days of the Cold War, when a concrete wall ran through Berlin, when proxy wars were fought on every continent, when global superpowers had thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other, just one decision away from Armageddon. I long for those days because back then. the world was a much safer place. The world was a much safer place than it is today. the quantum computer was cracking encryption keys millions of them keys that protect everything from banking passwords to nuclear launch codes carl decided to test this he entered an rsa 4096 security key and ran down the hall for another coffee he wasn't in a hurry even the world's most powerful supercomputers would need billions or trillions of years to break rsa 4096 but when he returned five minutes later he couldn't believe it the key was cracked carl now realized his computer was the most powerful and dangerous weapon on earth he started to panic he tried to delete the data but it was already uploaded to ctec's private servers by sunrise three intelligence agencies had flagged the data transfer by 9 00 a.m the first bank security system was breached by noon every bank went dark the quantum apocalypse had begun your entire digital life depends on two prime numbers that's it two numbers and they protect everything your passwords your messages your bank accounts all of it modern encryption is based on this simple trick take two huge prime numbers and multiply them together that creates your public key a number anyone can use to send you secret messages but only someone who knows those original prime numbers can read those messages working backward trying to find those original numbers would take a computer billions of years or so we thought in december 2024 google unveiled project willow their quantum computer solved the problem in five minutes that would take our fastest supercomputers longer than the age of the universe quantum computers do this using superposition hang on hang on hang on you want to pump the brakes in the nerd chatter and fill me in well think about flipping a coin it lands on either heads or tails normal computer bits work the same way everything is either one or zero it's binary but quantum computer bits or qubits can be one and zero at the same time oh so qubits are non-binary what are they no they are but i need you to stop talking so instead of flipping that coin it's a coin spinning on its edge while it spins it's not heads or tails it's both at once that's superposition now imagine trying to crack a safe with a million combinations a normal computer can only try one combination at a time but a quantum computer it tries all combinations simultaneously the nsa has been warning about this moment for years they call it y2q the year quantum computers become powerful enough to break our current encryption they thought it would happen between 2030 and 2040 but willow changed everything for 30 years quantum computers suffered one major problem errors reading quantum data is like trying to read a book during an earthquake it's too unstable to work properly but google fixed that with project willow you know how to fix it by grouping qubits together there are groups of qubits handling processing and groups of qubits that do nothing but track and fix errors the more qubits you add the fewer errors you have it may sound counterintuitive but it's like building a sandcastle that gets stronger the bigger it gets now with ai's help quantum computers are on track to break current encryption by the year 2029 way ahead of schedule yeah this is bad in 2024 the department of defense accelerated its quantum modernization program their latest directive warns that critical systems must be quantum resistant by 2025. but one detail stands out they're not just protecting future messages they're racing to protect everything we've ever encrypted and they're running out of time they're running out of time they're running out of time they're running out of time when liz emery's phone buzzed at 4 a.m she almost ignored it after 15 years in cyber security late night calls usually meant someone at the hospital forgot their password but caller id showed mount sinai's emergency line the first report was in patient records appeared on digital billboards in times square they included data from quantum computers that showed that quantum computers were connected to the internet they included blood test results psychiatric evaluations and terminal diagnoses that patients had not yet told their families about senators congressmen ceos their private medical data was all over the internet she was still coordinating the hospital's response when the news reported that every dating app was breached then they came back online suddenly on every device in the city smartphones tvs billboards was a link to a site where anyone could look up any information that was part of the dating app breach direct messages real names and emails browser histories private photos and videos all revealed liz figured the only people celebrating were divorce attorneys then an email came into hospital security pay one billion dollars or every pacemaker control system on earth will go down pay another billion or insulin pumps will go down starting with diabetic children the city started to crack police dispatch systems were offline traffic lights went dark atms were done in the streets there was no way to get people to the streets no one could get out of the streets there was no way to get people out of the streets there was no way to get people out of the streets cnn anchors watched helplessly as their personal emails were displayed on screen the white house press secretary's private texts appeared during a briefing about the crisis then the nsa made an emergency broadcast that somehow made it through they said there was a nationwide system compromise for the safety of every american martial law was now imposed just as the message was covering the mandatory curfews every phone in the country went dark this episode sponsored by she's birdie you lock the hotel room door then check it again and maybe one more time because even the nicest room can feel unfamiliar at night that's why she's birdie created birdie box with she's birdie you can bring peace of mind with you birdie box is a portable travel door alarm for hotels dorms airbnbs and anywhere you stay away from home just attach it to the door frame switch it on and if someone opens the door birdie box blasts a loud siren and flashing alarm to alert you and everyone nearby because the best part of travel isn't worrying it's sleeping soundly birdie box from she's birdie locking in peace of mind wherever you stay for safer more confident travel visit she's birdie.com that's s-h-e-s-b-i-r-d-i-e.com check engine abs or maintenance light on take the guesswork out of your warning lights with o'reilly veriscan the service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ase certified master technicians and if you need help we could recommend a shop for you ask for o'reilly veriscan today oh oh oh o'reilly auto parts major technology companies are racing to build quantum resistant encryption google ibm and microsoft have teams working around the clock but there's a big problem quantum computers don't just threaten future messages they threaten everything we've ever encrypted every encrypted file every secure transmission every protected database becomes vulnerable even ones from decades ago intelligence agencies have been collecting encrypted data since the cold war your old emails your financial records your private messages all sitting in databases waiting to be unlocked then there's bitcoin its entire security system depends on the same math quantum computers are about to break shadow groups have already collected hundreds of thousands of encrypted bitcoin wallets they're just waiting for quantum computers powerful enough to crack them all that money could vanish in seconds at current prices that's billions of dollars total to zero baby banks know this is coming jp morgan started building quantum resistant vaults in 2023 not for gold or cash for computers these facilities will never connect to the internet they'll use paper records and human couriers the military's training for quantum dark operations missions conducted without digital communication teams practice using pre-arranged signals dead drops and one-time code books the same methods that kept secrets during world war ii the nsa's latest reports show project willow proved something they already knew the quantum apocalypse isn't coming it's already here the nsa isn't trying to stop it it's preparing for what comes after because the race is no longer about building quantum computers the race is to survive them the line at chase manhattan stretched around the block cash only no cards no transfers just paper money and metal coins donald janik watched from his office window across the street in his 30 years as a security consultant he'd seen a lot of changes but nothing like this the quantum apocalypse was erasing decades of technological progress his company now specialized in physical security armed guard guards, paper record keeping, mechanical locks. The kind of security you couldn't hack. When the hospital records started appearing online, they shut down their networks and went analog. Now armed guards protected rooms full of paper files. Doctors wrote prescriptions by hand. Old mechanical devices became valuable. Typewriter repair shops reopened. Filing cabinet manufacturers couldn't keep up with demand. Bicycle messengers replaced email. Everyone with skills from the pre-digital age suddenly found themselves in demand. Retired secretaries who could take shorthand. Mechanics who could fix cars without computers. Accountants who knew how to keep books by hand. The younger generation struggled to adapt. They never lived in an analog world. The smart ones saw it coming. They'd pulled their money out early and bought physical assets. Gold, silver, land, things you could touch. Things that existed in the real world, not just as numbers in a database. The rest had to adapt or lose everything. Back at Stanford, Carl Bishop struggled with depression. He blamed himself. SeaTac, the company supporting his work, no longer took his calls. Still, Carl wouldn't stop digging. He had to find out what went wrong. Then Carl found something buried in the data. Timestamps that didn't make sense. Some encrypted messages were broken months ago. Then he realized the quantum apocalypse didn't start with his mistake. It started months earlier. The first bank breach wasn't at noon the first day. It was three months later. It was three months before. But balances weren't touched. Hospital records, websites, smartphone apps, most have been compromised for months. But again, the data wasn't touched. Carl realized the chaos wasn't an accident. It was cover for something else. Something much bigger. Something much worse. ♪♪ Scientists are racing to develop new encryption methods that even quantum computers can't break. They call it post-quantum cryptography. The strategy: find mathematical problems so complex that not even quantum computers can solve them efficiently. But there's a problem. Whenever we think we've found an unbreakable code, someone finds a way to break it. The Germans thought Enigma was mathematically impossible to crack. The Japanese believed Purple would keep their World War II communications secret forever. The NSA once claimed RSA encryption would take billions of years to defeat. They were all wrong. Some banks are returning to physical security systems, offline computers, paper records, and in-person verification. Government agencies are reviving Cold War-era methods: one-time pads, dead drops, and bicycle couriers. Sometimes things don't happen the way you planned. Sometimes you can end up lower than you started. What? Quicksilver. Somebody out there gets it. Quantum dark operations like air-gapped facilities, analog communication, and paper messages could work, but their temporary solutions can't. Throughout history, humans have played an endless cat-and-mouse game with secrets. Someone creates an unbreakable code, someone else breaks it, and a more complex code replaces it, and the cycle continues. In the quantum age, there are no more secrets, only information waiting to be revealed. That's why the NSA isn't trying to stop it. They aren't building new code-breaking technology, but you know what they are building? Bunkers. ♪ ♪ The concrete room in the bunker beneath Fort Meade was cold and quiet. Carl Bishop was in his fifth hour of interrogation by four government agents. The NSA building above them had been abandoned when their classified files leaked. But this room, which technically didn't exist, still had power and a working computer. Carl learned the truth, but he wasn't sure what was going on. Carl learned the truth over the past few months. C-Tech wasn't a tech company. It was a joint NSA-DARPA program that had been running since 2019. They didn't have just one quantum computer. They had a network of them, hidden in secure facilities nationwide. For years, the network had quietly broken every encryption it touched: banking records, medical files, private messages, and government secrets. The intelligence agencies had access to everything. But there was a problem. They couldn't act on the information they received. They couldn't act on any of it without revealing their capability. Imagine knowing about every terrorist plot, every corporate crime, every government corruption scandal, but being unable to stop any of it without exposing how you got the information. The agencies were drowning in intelligence they couldn't use. The solution was elegant: create a world where privacy no longer existed, where every secret was public. If nothing were private, there'd be no need to explain how they obtained their intelligence. No search warrants were necessary. Everything was already exposed. The social chaos was part of the plan. Communities going analog wasn't a problem. It was the goal. Drive the dangerous elements offline, where they could be more easily monitored through traditional surveillance. Let the general public choose between convenience and privacy. They would choose convenience. They always did. But the intelligence agencies had their own solution for secure communication: a return to Cold War tradecraft. Dead drops, one-time pads, face-to-face meetings in soundproof rooms. Their most sensitive operations moved to facilities that never touched a network or used a computer. Buildings that didn't officially exist, staffed by people with no digital footprint. They maintained two separate organizations: the public-facing agency everyone knew about, and the shadow agency that operated completely offline. The public agency would rebuild its security and updated systems. All of it would be theater. The real work happened in places like this concrete bunker. Places with no windows, no cameras, no phones. Places where messages were still written by hand and burned after reading. The most important secrets were never digitized, never encrypted, and never stored anywhere except in human memory. The NSA didn't break encryption to destroy society. They destroyed society to hide that they'd broken encryption almost a year ago. Carl was set up. The quantum apocalypse was pinned on him. But what could he do about it? Martial law was still in effect. The NSA wanted him to keep working and keep quiet. He could either agree to cooperate or go to prison. Violation of the Espionage Act, willful communication of national defense information, unauthorized access of classified documents. The list went on and on. He didn't have much of a choice. As Carl left the concrete room, he realized that in a world with no secrets, the most powerful people weren't those who could break encryption. The most powerful people are those who could keep secrets without it. And right now, the only people who could do that worked for the NSA. ♪ ♪ Thank you for checking out today's Y-Files compilation. My name is Morgan. That's Wyatt and Virgil. We are beavers. Please say nice things about us in the comments so the human brings us back. Do the human a favor and hit like, subscribe, comment, share. That stuff really helps the channel. If there's a story that you'd like us to cover, go to the Y-Files dot com slash tips, send an email, Discord, YouTube chat, whatever works really. Check out our podcast. It's called the Y-Files Operation Podcast and it's available everywhere podcasts are available. And we started releasing videos on Spotify, which the human just won't shut up about. If you listen or watch, be sure to leave a like or a comment or a thumbs up or a rating of any kind. That'd be swell. Be sure to check out our Discord server. 85,000 super weird, exceptionally interesting folks on there and it's a lot of fun. 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I love my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music. So I'm singing like I should. But then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth, my friends, and it never ends. No, it never ends. I fear the crab cat and I got stuck inside Mel's home with MKUltra. I'm being only too aware. Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone on a film set? Were the shadow people there? The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man, I'm told. And his name was Code. And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fishes. Heck, the fish are Thursday nights, Wednesday, Jay 2. And the werepahs have their feet all through the night. All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. So the werepahs have their feet all through the night. The Mothman sightings and the solar storm still come to have got the secret city underground. Mysterious number stations, planets are both two Project Stargate, and what the Dark Watchers found We're in a simulation, don't you worry though The Black Knight said a lot, he told me so I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish Heck, no fish on Thursday nights when they chase you And the wild birds are making me all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the wild birds are making me all through the night So the wild birds are making me all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth