AI on the NFL Sidelines & Zelle Cybersecurity Lawsuit | TSG Ep. 916

Are you ready for some ai? Thursday night football, you're watching Textron Gang. Hey everyone, it's Alan Shimel.

Welcome to our Thursday Textron Gang. You know, there is nothing like the first night opening night of the NFL season. I wait all year for it from the Super Bowl until now.

I'm jazzed. We've got the world champion Philadelphia Eagles playing their arch rival used to be America's team. I don't know if they still are the Dallas Cowboys, but why even watch it?

Let's just ask AI what, what's gonna happen? 3% accuracy that they know what's no, they don't know. Anyway, welcome to Text and gang.

We're gonna talk some AI football and some other great stuff. Let me introduce our panel to you for today. We have some of our regulars who I actually, I love this panel Garima, BA b Powell, Jack Gold, Teri Robinson, Jon Swartz, and of course Mike Vizard.

Ladies, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. Are you ready for some football? Yes.

Alright. Definitely. I think we are.

Anybody playing fantasy football this year? No. And you Okay.

I I had a draft last night. I think I did pretty damn good considering, But I'm terrible at it, so I just gave up. Well, no, now with the ai well, it tells you who to draft.

It makes it easy. Ah, ah, fuey. You should just root for your damn team and not play fantasy.

I got this guy, that guy, trade that guy. 'cause then you're watching, then you're watching the game for all the wrong reasons. Yeah.

But I have YouTube NFL Sunday ticket with the multicast, and I switch around. I'm, it feeds my a DD I'm in New England. It's been sad for years.

We're just, you know, I I I've watched football in your house. I'm still recovering from the whiplash. Exactly, Exactly.

I switch her out a little something for everyone. Anyway, let, let's talk, Mike, let's start off with that and, and then we can, uh, go on from there. All right.

It, it should not come as a surprise, at least that Microsoft has a deal with the NFL where they are infusing some of their AI capabilities on the sidelines. And the coaches are allegedly gonna use this stuff to make some decisions. Of course, you can't watch football these days without seeing those surface tablets everywhere.

I think there's some sort of contractor deal somewhere between those two. But John, um, I'm having a hard time envisioning exactly how the coaches are gonna use this. 'cause what happens when, I don't know if I'm Andy Reed and the AI tells me that with the third long and two minutes to go, I should take out Mahomes.

Yeah, that's, you know, that's funny. There's gonna be, that might happen, you know, like a, a hallucinatory uh, uh, uh, effect, right? Where, whereas there's an obvious call and it's completely boshed.

I mean, it happens with Jet GPT and Claude with new times. But, you know, there's funny, there's like certain things we can count on in an NFL season. You've got the impressive Jet flyovers.

You've got these inept personnel decisions by Cowboys, gm, Jerry Jones, and you have these technology agreements. And this is kind of an expansion on a long running relationship between the league and Microsoft. So the idea, as Mike alluded to, and, uh, Alan said is, is the use of AI on the sidelines for real, real-time game data analysis by coaches and players.

So you've probably seen this surface computers everywhere. All the teams use them. It's a sideline viewing system, is what it's called.

This is an upgraded version. And the idea is that there's a new feature built within GitHub copilot filters that, that, that, or plays are based on criteria. So they're looking at down in distance scoring plays penalties.

They quickly analyze formations, decipher coverages, make data-driven and strategic decisions. Basically, I think of it as the laminated sheets that's moving in real time motion and is actually talking to, you're interacting with it and, you know, we'll see how it works. This is part of a larger agreement, multi-year agreement that would also extend to analyzing draft prospect performance outside the NFL combine.

The teams would use, uh, AI video tools with Azure during team practices to assistant coaching and player evaluations. And the reason why I think this has some sort of traction is that one of the best strategists I believe in the NFL besides Andrew Reed, is, uh, the Rams coach, Sean McVey, who is, who is kind of vouching for it. He said in a sense, when he looks back at games, he says, what was I thinking?

I'm trying to figure out, you know, what I should have done at a certain time and I didn't have enough time. Maybe this gives me a little bit more of an edge. And I think with somebody like him, he'll take full advantage.

Uh, some of the other coaches, not so much. I think this actually, in a weird way, this technology is going to help enhance the teams that are better well organized and are better coaching staff staffs. Um, it would be interesting though, to see how this evolves.

I mean, eventually we could see more reliance on this technology if it works rather than the people. Um, that's a little bit scary because I love the human element of sports because it's so unpredictable. AI in a sense, may be taking some of that predictability out and making it more of a cookie cutter league in terms of turf types of strategies that it, uh, uh, advocates in in games.

So I've got three things on this. Three things. I learned this from my friend Mike Rizza.

He always says three things. Okay, here, here's my three things. First of all, Moneyball, right?

Mm-hmm. For those switch sports, we'll go over to baseball. Yep.

Mm-hmm. You know, Moneyball has been around since Billy Bean and the Oakland A of the Go-Go, you know, uh, the, the GBI brothers and everything, right? And it, they, they didn't call it ai, but they, it was a real ai, a real intelligence.

They had a smart kid from Princeton who was able to run statistics and tendencies. And then they started making decisions based upon metrics. And man, there was an outcry from the old guard, the guys who managed from their gut, you know, and make a call and can recognize good talent when they see it.

And, you know, over the 15, 20 years since then, money ball's kinda one out, right? People make decisions they want. Can I make, Can I, can I interject one thing though?

This is a thing that's always kind of bothered me. 'cause I'm, I'm from the Bay Area, and you're right. It, it was revolutionary.

It, it is used by every team. But just look back at history and Billy Bean and his, his heyday, you know, how many playoff series the A's won in the, in those years? 0 1 1.

Yeah. Against the Minnesota twins. And they All, but they also, but they also had a payroll one 10th of some of the teams.

They All, and they also had a great pitching staff Yeah. Of ACEs. That was basically the main reason they won the, I just wanna just throw a bone though, to a former Yankee Scout who I think is gonna go to the Hall of Fame one day, is the general manager of the Giants.

Brian Sabian, who's back with the Yankees. He was the old school guy and he won three championships. So it's kind of a mix of both.

I just, I think we should always think about That. Well, I, but, and that, and that's the point. I think there's still gonna be a lot of Vince Lombardi es football coaches who, who coach from their gut and they decide when they're going to go for it.

On the fourth and one though, in the NFL today, it's all, it's all metrics and stats. They know a fourth and one, you have a 70% chance of making it depending where you are in the field. And, and so this has been coming before we had this AI thing, number one.

Number two, it's interesting, Microsoft has to deal with the NFL to use AI on the sidelines. But all of the television networks who carry NFL games have their own AI deals with, with, uh mm-hmm. Aws, Google, AWS is one.

And, you know, what's the chances of a running play on this versus the chances of a passing play? Who's going to get the pass to them? What it's really about is gambling, because there are degenerates out here who will, who will bet on any particular thing happening on a football field, who's the first pass going to, who's carrying the first run?

How far will they go? When will the first fumble come? Now with ai, you could do all kinds of stuff like that.

You have all kinds of crazy bets, parlays and exotics. And so that, that, that's a, that's a second thing. What was my third thing?

Anyway? Um, you know, that's the problem with getting older. I've lost my third thing.

Wait, Wait, wait. Ask ai. I can ask ai.

No, no. But it was Moneyball, it was the other ones. Oh, here it is.

I have an article coming out on Techstrong ai. I don't think it'll be out. Maybe it's out today.

If it's not out today, it'll be out tomorrow about putting AI in charge of our nuclear weapons. Oh, right. Do you wanna play thermo nuclear war?

Right. Outta the movie. Right.

And here's the thing, when you put AI in charge of nuclear weapons, it treats it like a game. Because to them it's all, you know, to the ai, ai it's sort of ai it's kind of game theory. And it doesn't, almost every time, every scenario you give it winds up in a thermonuclear holocaust because it doesn't know how to back off.

It just pushes, pushes, pushes, pushes. Now, I'm not saying I'm not equating football with nuclear war today, but if you let AI coach your nu your football team, the same way it coaches and plays out nuclear war games, you may find it's not a very successful strategy. Right.

It don't, it doesn't work for nuclear weapons. And I don't know if it works for football, You will Find you, wait, wait. You will most certainly find your injury rates going up because the AI has no context for human value.

Back to your thermonuclear scenario, He did Bill Belichick, He could use some AI in North Carolina. Jack liked that one. I could tell Jack shook his head.

Well, he Just lost, right? Yeah. He got His first game.

Yeah. No, but, but there is another issue around ai and that is that, um, and, and it, Ellen, it's, it's similar to what you were talking about with the, you know, the thermonuclear. Let's play thermonuclear war.

If AI is running offense on one team and AI is running defense on the other team, you're not gonna get a whole lot of variations. One of the things that makes football unique and what really brings out the big plays is the coach is doing something that's totally unexpected. Right?

I'm gonna do something that the defense, I'm gonna make a long ball pass when it's, you know, fourth and one. Um, AI isn't gonna tell you to do that. AI's gonna tell you to, you know, 98% chance you're gonna, you know, do a quarterback sneak and it'll be successful.

Sure. But you're not gonna score the big plays that way. So it's gonna be a really boring game.

Yes. Long term. If AI actually does take over and, and that's the risk.

And at some point, why do we need coaches? If AI's doing everything that's, Well, at some point, why do you need players? You just, ai this is what, this is what this team's gonna do, this what that team's gonna do, and what, what's the result?

Ball, roller ball. You wanna play the devil's advocate here? I mean, I feel sad for sportsmanship here.

Um, I am a technologist and I'm all in for emerging technology. But my critical questions, let me play the devil's advocate here. Who owns the data?

Yeah. You know, we all see that this is a new wave of LLMs in making AI in sports and everything. But what about the privacy and ethical issues related to, uh, let's say health of a player, for example, you know, strategy, for example, who owns the bigger equation?

Where are the sports alliances? And we probably need something more than just integration of, you know, Azure AI into NFLs. I, and it makes me feel sad also because it's like not vendor neutral strategy, as you said, um, Ellen in the beginning.

I think we need to diversify and democratize it in a way that it makes, uh, e equitable access to everyone. Right? So there's a lot of issues in this whole scenario where, you know, okay, I am all in for efficiency.

These 32 clubs will be more efficient. And, you know, you can probably make agent AI work for AI and sports and all that, but the bigger questions still, uh, are like the ethical issues which are arising out of this. I think it just leads you down this path of what the NFL has always been about, was about parity.

It's about, you know, ultimate socialism in a sense where everyone's equal shares. And I also think we, we kind of, we've kind of started this with the West coast offense where it, it became a copycat league where we became very predict Predictable. The NF nfl Zoe's a copycat league.

Yeah. But That's, That's not what the NFL is about. The NFL is about making money.

Bottom line, The great this marketing machine perhaps that the world's ever known. And They're matter Making money no matter what, matter what the game happens. You know, as predictable as it may become, and it has been predictable over the last couple of years in the way offenses are run.

It's, it's, it's, it's gonna work. It's still gonna work. It'll have this, it'll have a certain amount of appeal.

But I think in a sense, as Jack said, it takes out the element of surprise. You know, there's certain things about teams like the Raiders of the, of yesteryear. You remember the, The bomb.

I, you know what though? I don't think you're giving AI enough credit. I call this the, I know that, you know, that I know that, you know, right.

So if I'm the AI and I'm saying, well, there's usually a 90% chance I'm gonna run off tackle left, but my opponent is using a good AI too, and he knows that's coming. So now's a good time for it to switch. And I think you'll see, you'll see the battles of the football SLM small language modules, right.

That, that, that take that into account. The trouble with that approach is how good are your models trained to begin with? Right?

And each team has to train their own model because of their unique players. Mm-hmm. Uh, to garima's, uh, issue earlier.

Uh, who owns the data? Where does the data come from? Yep.

And so you're gonna find that there, a lot of this is gonna be hopefully real time rag or, or whatever they're gonna use to model. Sure. Uh, the, the general model.

And that's gonna mean there's an awful lot of processing power going in the background. Now what happens, by the way, if suddenly the internet goes down, does the game stop? It should be, It'll go old school old Though.

I do, I do have one request. Uh, I'm hoping AI can put this one to bed for me. Are NFL referees making calls that favor the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes or Not?

Okay. That I might go for Pass interference on fork down. Of course.

Yes. Um, you, it's, you know, remember back in the day with the, the first team that really embraced the computers the actually had? Yes.

You don't suppose that they could build their own data center and then create No, no. They could build their own models. That's what I'm saying.

You could build glory, build your own Now. I mean, they, They could get an inch now. Yeah.

And look on, I'm gonna end this with this. It's about the betting follow the trail to the money. If they, I'm Gonna stick with college football.

Alright, well, you know, oh, that's a gets you know what co these days college is worse than the NFL. The guys get paid. Yeah.

No, I don't like that. But, but I think it's more exciting. I have to tell you, you know, the NFL football is, has become more predictable, but Yeah.

Yeah. But I gotta tell you about the college getting paid. The, the, the, the universities made so much money on football.

Absolutely. Football. It's about time the players Come.

Yeah. On the backs of these kids. 99% of which never make Yeah, It's, it's okay.

'cause high school sports is next. So there you go. Yeah.

Alright, let's, let's take my AI is telling me we should stop right here. Um, we're gonna come back. Let's move off of sports though.

That was exciting. And talk about a potential AI vulnerability cataclysm. Oh my.

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Contact us today and tell your story to the world in the most powerful way with Textron Group. Hey folks, we're back. And Alan wrote a piece about a, the rise of vulnerabilities created by all these AI coding tools.

And I'll be honest, I almost fell off my chair when I read it. 'cause I always thought Alan was a little more pro AI coding tools than the article suggested. But he's wondering if there's a cataclysm coming our way because these vulnerabilities are now being developed at a level of scale that we are not able to absorb and remediate.

But garima, what's your take here? 'cause you're in the software development business and, you know, for, for me, it was kind of like, you know, I I, I felt like I wasn't the only one saying this. Finally, The article is very timely, to be honest, because, you know, we have been struggling with investment in cyberspace, right?

And, uh, I would like to urge to the CXOs that, uh, they should understand this is not a technical problem anymore. Siloed cybersecurity problem is a strategic business challenge and demanding urgent board level attention and investment. Um, if you see the article, you will recognize that AI is becoming an autonomous exploit engine capable of rapidly discovering, exploiting and weaponizing vulnerabilities at speed where human cannot defend it, right?

So let's say for example, you see LLMs all over the place, prompt injections, AI agents, all in play together. And these AI driven threats are outpacing any kind of traditional defense methods, creating an urgent need for new strategies. Now, what can be the solution to this problem?

Or what urgent actions rather, um, than just panicking to, you know, the urgency. I think a few things, which I'm also an open source advocate, right? And a lot of these, uh, vulnerabilities also originate from open source, uh, space, right?

So we have to shrink the tax service by retiring legacy systems, for example, killing unused features, implementing zero trust architecture, also prioritizing, uh, features by demanding or patching security one, you know, reliability from vendors. And this is an urgent need. I, I think, you know, we have to put a lot more focus on this and increasing investments in, uh, programs like bun bug bounty programs and open source security audits, et cetera, et cetera.

So all this like, you know, it's not something which is a fairytale anymore. I think we need to be very conscious about our security posture and how do we, um, and again, we have spoken about this, uh, in previous episodes as well. Shadow ai, you know, we need to kind of govern our AI posture as well.

Bring security at the forefront. New cybersecurity roles are in making, you know, advocacy for security alliances. There's a lot to be done.

And to be honest, I mean, I think open source communities has have a lot, lot larger role to play in this. So is a good article. I will tell you, there's a companion article that should be out today as well on Security Boulevard that I wrote that takes more of a cyber specific role with, on this one.

I try to play more into the developer piece of it. Um, you know, I've been in the security world a long time, 30 years, and I made a lot of friends in those years when some of the people that I mentioned in this article are worried like this. They're not penny pennies, right?

Chris Weal, one of the original loft folks, the co-founder, Veracode Gotti. Aron, who's the, uh, CSO for the Cloud Security Alliance, as well as the co uh, co-founder I think of, not gnostic, uh, KN something, I don't remember the name right now, but Gotti's been in a lot of companies. The woman from Google, and I'm blanking on her name in front of me, but also really bright, bright lady, Bruce Schneider, right?

One of the most famous names in cyber. The problem we've got is, look at best, historically, we've been able to tread water to keep up with the raft of vulnerabilities at best, right? It's threatened to drown us time and time again.

The way the bad guys can use AI to find new vulnerabilities now is like a tsunami wave. When I was ge when I was just getting a little boogie board ready, a boogie board isn't gonna let me ride the tsunami. And this tsunami threatens to just over wash us.

Now, I don't wanna be Henny Penny as God, he said in his, uh, God ever said in his LinkedIn post. And I cited it in there. There's still time for us to do something.

And I I, and in both articles I laid out things we can do to try to stem the tide here, to try to buy us time. 'cause we're gonna need time to catch up. That's the nature of our security.

It's a cat and mouse game. When that mouse gets a new strategy, it takes a little time sometimes for the cat to catch up. We need to buy time to catch up.

Unfortunately, though, it's sad that to me, too much like go global warming. If only we could cut emissions by 5% a year for the next 10 years, we can avoid that point of no return. And the world doesn't have the willpower to do it because we're on a diet of petrochemicals of petro carbs.

It's the same thing. We, for all of our hand wringing and oh my, oh my, and talking about garima, about open source security and s bombs and all of this. We never seem to do what we really need to get done to stem the tide.

And I'm just afraid it's Even scarier, Alan. Sorry, Interrupting. But, but it's even scarier than that because if you look at the situation, the bad actors have a lot more investment in AI than most of the good guys do.

And so if you're looking at it from purely the perspective of investments, they're, they're probably orders of magnitude more invested in trying to find bad stuff to do to us than the good guys are trying to find good stuff to repel those guys. So it's, it's a really scary situation right now. I Don't think most people, I also advocate for one more thing, uh, before you jump in, Mike.

Um, autonomy risk is the biggest risk in the AI era because what is happening is that with, uh, efficiency targets, and you know, what AI power can show you and how profitable you can become, there is decision making in the hands of ai, it what it is causing a different kind of a problem. Not only transparency, accountability, you know, even job roles. People don't see the bias, which are, which is built in, in the system.

And it is, it, it's a larger risk to the entire software ecosystem that, you know, if we autonomize everything, what kind of risk are we running? You know, where is human in the lead and human in the loop, Right? So, Terry, walk me through this math a little bit.

'cause I think we've seen this before, right? The number, the percentage of vulnerabilities that are kind of actively exploited is maybe three to 5%. And we've been, and we struggle to deal with that.

Now imagine, to Greenman's point, there's new kinds of vulnerabilities. Plus, to Jack's point, the bad guys can find the existing vulnerabilities faster and come up with exploits. How long is it before you know what Alan's talking about?

Maybe we're already out of time. I, well, that's, I'm, we're sitting here listening to this discussion and, and thinking about that. I mean, yeah, we need to buy time, but can we buy enough time?

I mean, I don't, it, it's hard for me to see where we're gonna get that time, you know, Alan, to actually be able to write our ship or, or if not, get ahead of these guys. At least get on par with them. How about Building an arc?

Yeah, it might, it might be It. Take two of each of you, and that's all. And I just feel like, you know, on, I guess they're gonna be exploiting, I think, vulnerabilities in order of magnitude.

I mean, I think it's, I think I don't, I don't know exactly what the answer is. I, I thought it was interesting, um, you know, some of the, the steps that you gave Alan about, you know, trying to, to get to a better place. And I, I did like, um, or I did think, uh, quite a bit about, um, the whole idea of insecurity.

And we all know this, we've been to show after show, right? And we see this, that people do tend to buy features and things like that. And that's maybe the wrong mindset.

Now, in, in, in this world where AI is, is really starting to, you know, to dominate and, um, where the bad guys clearly have the advantage. I mean, you know, how many features can you buy? You need to get something else from your vendors besides that to be able to counter this.

So let me, let me give you my watchtower moment. Ding Dingdong on a Sunday morning. Here's Alan Shimel with the Good News.

Um, you know, at Black Hat, I had a chance to sit down with two good friends of mine from the cybersecurity world. One, Jeremiah Grossman. Jeremiah was former head of Yahoo Security, founded White Hat Security.

Uh, was this, I think CSO or CTO at Sentinel One, when they got started, started another company they sold to Tenable, then most recently was doing the VC thing. Mm. And then Jeremiah's compadre, they've done a bunch of, they've worked together in almost all those companies.

I spoke about Robert Hansen. A lot of people in the industry know him as Ars Snake. Robert's probably one of the greatest white hat hackers in the industry.

They, we talked about Chris Weis Ball earlier, right? Yes. ARS Snakes right up there with him.

Um, Robert and, and Jeremiah just started a new company. They're raising money right now. They have some working prototypes.

You'll see more of it this quarter. They're taking a different approach to vulnerabilities. They're saying, we will never keep up with the amount of new CVEs that are being generated.

We'll never keep up with this. You know, excuse whether you are using Fuzz AI or something else. Jack, to your point, the, the bad guys invest a hell of a lot more money into it, and they find more vulnerabilities.

But through a, a, a lot of research and a ton of digging and sifting and lifetimes of being in this industry, Jeremiah and Robert's premises, the bad guys only focus on about a thousand vulnerabilities. All of this other stuff somewhat is noise. Now that thousand's not static, it changes, right?

Some go in favor, some go out of favor, some new ones pop in. But instead of trying to fight 250,000 CVEs, let's focus on the thousand that are being used right now. Therefore, if we monitor which CVEs are being actively exploited in attacks today, and keep a running tally of that thousand or whatever it is, and make our defenses focused on that thousand only, and tune out the rest for now will be successful.

Is that a, you know, Mike, you're shaking your head The Bad in the Bronx, The bad guys are gonna have ai, so they'll, they well beyond the thousand, they'll be gonna be out the window from this approach Outright. It's even worse than that. Sorry, just a quick point though.

It, it's even worse than that. One of the problems that the good guys have is that in the past we've had sort of, kind of a central authority that brought all this stuff together and then disseminated the information. The government now is killing all of that.

It's just going away. And that's gonna put so many people at risk that it's, it's scary to really think about that central repository of information. I mean, it's not just security, it's also in health.

I, we can go on and on with this stuff, right? But getting rid of that is gonna put everybody at more risk than they are today. Like this perfect storm, right?

Of yeah. Of badness. Yeah.

You cannot tackle the security problem by tool versus tool, right? I mean, whatever you, uh, identify as a core, I mean, somebody else is smarter to, you know, hit that core and, you know, try to kind of get to it. The only solution to this problem is shifting the balance of your skill towards cyber professionals.

You know, the only element which can tackle this challenge is human. And the more we kind of think about it, the a you mentioned Alan, right? I mean, the human is dark here, and you, you have to invest in human capital.

Uh, it is needless to say that, you know, we need to have tools and capabilities, but this is not a silver bullet. The trouble agreement with that approach is there just aren't enough humans to be able to handle the situation. That's, That's we're Issue of bringing new security people on board.

Yeah, well, That's right. And training About you, not training people adequately. Yeah, I believe you, you need AI to fight AI too, Right?

That's the issue, right? Are we gonna be able to come up with AI to find these vulnerabilities and remediate them faster than the bad guys can use AI to exploit them? And that's the $64 billion question.

We gotta take a break though. We're gonna close this, this, uh, segment out. Let's come back and talk about Zelle.

I, I got it. I can't wait to talk about this one. You're watching.

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Hey folks, we're back. And yes, we're talking about Zelle because the attorney general for the state of New York is now suing Zelle over some issues involving fraud and lack of security. And the attorney general is picking up a case that the federal government dropped, essentially, and now is, uh, pursuing the same basic charges.

And I guess, Terry, you wrote the story on Security Boulevard, but walk us through here a little bit on what exactly is it that they want Zelle to do, and what are the implications for all the other digital payments platforms? Because they're equally insecure. Yeah, well, yes.

Um, okay. So I think we're all, probably even on a personal level, uh, familiar with what happened with Zelle a few years back. There was a six year period, right?

I think it, it was six, seven years. Uh, where there were vulnerabilities. They didn't really, uh, report, you might have remembered there was, you know, a lot of, uh, the burden was placed on the consumer, right?

I mean, they were saying they weren't gonna, uh, uh, uh, reimburse you for, you know, these scams and, and all of that. And then you started getting your little notifications on Zelle. Do you sure you wanna do this?

Do you know, you know, scams going on, um, the government, um, we, we talked, uh, in the last segment about how the government had sort of decimated cybersecurity and that central, you know, point, uh, of governance. And, uh, they've done the same thing, I think in consumer, uh, protection, um, here. So that's why tis James has stepped in, um, now that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, um, has dropped their case.

And, you know, we all know that tush James, um, is the one that went after Donald Trump for a lot of his transgressions as well. And she's, uh, gonna stick with it. I think.

Um, I do think it has implications for all of the payment, uh, platforms because they are sort of all in the same, in the, in the same place in terms of being vulnerable, uh, and whatever. Um, she's going after the money and billions of dollars. Um, and we talk a little bit in the story about how to, you know, kind of determine, uh, what the, the loss was here and, and, and what they should be going after in, in court.

But yeah, I mean, uh, this is sort of a wake up call, I think to the, the payment platforms that they've gotta get with the, the program. I don't know exactly what the program is right now in terms of what those, uh, uh, uh, requirements should be for them, but I think a lot of the security people that I talk to for the story believe that that's gonna start coming out in the court case, right? If it makes it, um, you're gonna start seeing some, uh, guidance, um, that the platforms have to follow.

But it's an interesting case, and I, I kind of like to see her in action personally. Um, Me too, before they caught her away with the federal inquiry, the, you know, the witch hunt about a mortgage Yeah. The witch hunt that they have there, but yeah.

Um, But this raises a broader question. I I think, uh, Terry, to your point around the consumer stuff, the technology is way ahead of what most consumers understand, especially from a security perspective. And so the question becomes how do you protect yourself as a consumer or for that matter, even as a business user from these platforms that you don't understand that you don't know what's going on behind the scenes.

Yeah. And there's no regulation right now that I know of that says you will do X. Yeah.

I mean, there's some, but, but very, very lax and certainly the federal government's not gonna add any more of that, um, given that, Well, not this administration. Exactly. So it, it it's up to the states, but then it's a state by state.

You know, you can't have 50 lawsuits against Zelle. It, it just doesn't work. No.

You got class action, no Class action. This is really a buyer beware situation. Uh, people are using these platforms and, and it's not just Zelle, it's all of them.

It's even TikTok. It's a, it's a bunch of stuff, right? It's Facebook, you don't know what's going on behind the scenes.

And so, you know, really, buyer beware. You, you should be, you should be afraid. We should be very afraid.

Jack And I, I'm sorry, go ahead, Terry. Well, I was just gonna say, there is an opaqueness here to all of those things that you mentioned, Jack, all those platforms, and, and I sometimes wonder how did we allow that to happen too as a society, and even under governments that were a little more, uh, Consumer Friendly oriented toward regulation and consumer friendly. Yeah.

How did, how did we get to this point? Um, so I'm gonna tell you, I, and this is a surprising position for me, for those who know me, right? I'm, I'm kind of your, you know, prototypical coastal, elite, big, uh, consumer protection person.

I think we've, we've created a society of cripples when it comes to watching out over our own interests in fraud on credit cards and digital transactions. Mm-hmm. Because e exactly, Terry, what you said, we had all of these things.

My debit card gets stolen. I what a pain in the butt. I gotta call the bank and get a new debit card.

Am I responsible for anything because I left it on the counter? No, the bank eats that. Or some, some, you know, thing in the, uh, in the atmosphere absorbs the loss, not me, right?

My credit card, I don't like what I got. I'm disputing this charge and they automatically take it off my bill. We, we have never had to bear the, the, the, the, the, you know, consequences of frivolous, careless, negligent use of our digital payment, uh, you know, digital payments.

Um, now on the, on the consumer level, that's true. On the corporate level, it's a little different, right? You, you do, I I recently became aware of a case $850,000 woman in the, uh, and this is not a person as a corporate case, but a controller gets an email asking them, saying it purporting to be from a, a, a, a payer, a customer who's gonna send money, asking them to confirm the bank account information for a CH.

She says, oh, no, this is the wrong information. Let me give you the right information. Typical men in the middle, they then take that right to the payer and say, here's the new information.

Here's your old information, here's the new information. Of course, with a, you know, a, a fake email address, company pays the eight 50 never goes to this company, goes to some account that was set up in TD Bank, and god knows where it went from there. But no one paniced.

'cause we got a million dollars of cyber insurance. It's not gonna cost us a dime. That's why we paid the cyber insurance.

Guess what, under that million dollars of cyber insurance, email fraud was only covered up to a hundred thousand dollars. Company had to eat $750,000. I don't care how big your company is, 750 grand.

Hertz. Hertz, Yeah. You, you're never, but, but Alan, you're never gonna be able to completely eliminate human error.

You're never gonna completely, but we need people to be more vigilant, uh, before I press that send button. Yeah. And we are sitting on knowledge equity here, right in the panel where we are specialists in our area.

We know emerging technology, how technology can help us. And also it's a dual edged sword. Uh, I sound like old school, but, you know, think about people in the developing countries, uh, you know, people who have a lot, has not got a lot more exposure to technology.

There is, uh, like a lot of accountability on the businesses as well to make sure that this tech technology integration is safe for people who do not have the awareness or do not have the knowledge equity, which we have in this panel. Right? So I think it's a, it's a right kind of a balance we have to strike.

And, you know, I also sound like old school, but certifications, audits, you know, all these things are they thing of the past, I don't know, but I'm, I'm of the mindset that just says, don't send money to people you don't know and you have not verbally checked with. There's some sort of mechanism that you have a clue about. Because otherwise you can just assume that there's some criminal.

And if the request is urgent, it's probably fraught, But it's getting worse because our kids are so used to being everything on their phone, right? Everything, everything. If someone comes to, I rings my doorbell and comes to my door and says, you know, I'm, I don't know, I'm, I wanna replace your roof and I'll give a, give you a great deal.

I'm gonna be very skeptical. But, you know, kids are so used to seeing stuff on their phones that they just cl they don't even read stuff anymore. They just click it.

Yeah. Done. We, John, We live like in this stage of convenience where everything should be easier than ever.

And the bad guys know this, or Yeah. Even if they're not bad guys, we just, we lapse into these. Yeah.

But let's, let's drag out today's whipping boy, ai, AI's making you worse. Sure. Absolutely.

Right? AI is, I got a fish from a, And yet, and yet there's a pushback to regulate AI in any way, shape or form, you know, from the government down, you know, and this is, well Gonna, you want an best way to go vaccine? You know, vaccines are bad.

Oh yeah. They're bad. Don't take it in this.

And ai, RNA. Yeah. Alright.

It's, it's Mr. N Ai, AI Even better. Alright.

Alright. I could see where we are descending it to the next level of not this very Wait, Wait, so wait a minute. We're, we're just gonna sit here and blame the kids for not being conscious of something.

I mean, they, In my day, I walk five miles uphill there and five miles uphill back Barefoot, barefoot. This is starting to sound Money. Pay the, No, it's not just kids.

All of us who use digital are, look, we all like it to be easy. I love being able to send money and receive money. You know, like, okay.

And, and also let's not let the platforms off the hook here. Exactly. Sloppy, Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

And they didn't care. They're out to make money. They're out to get business and move traffic.

Yeah. And there's No penalty to them. What's the penalty?

And Well, that's right. And I think that's what tis James wants is to impose some sort of penalty. Agreed.

Um, and, and maybe others will follow suit and are there some, you know, things they can do, somebody suggested, you know, put in a little friction there, have a little delay. You know, when, when somebody presses a, you know, button to say they wanna do a transaction and a big one, not maybe a little, you know, whatever, maybe there's a four hour delay. Maybe there's, you know, maybe it can be changed.

Who knows Mean a law kind of thing where I could rescind in three days. But the problem is that once the money's in there, they move it along, then They, that's it. I'm gonna disagree with Alan on one key point here.

I love to receive money, but send them money. Not so much. Not so Much.

You're right. You're right on that. All right.

Hey, I think we're about outta time panel. What a, what a delight today. Some great discussions on some tough subjects, but I'm glad we're at least ending it with smiles.

Um, have a happy Thursday everyone. We will see you tomorrow for our end of week Friday. Spectacular.

Stay tuned for that. We also have text Strong tv of course, following today. So stay tuned for that.

And wherever you're watching this episode of The Gang, YouTube, our TT channel, Textron tv, or anywhere else on social, LinkedIn and Facebook and X and all that, thank you for watching. I'm Alan Shimel. We're out.