 from San Jose, it's theCUBE, presenting Big Data Silicon Valley, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem partners. Hello everyone, I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE. I'm here with Dave Vellante, my co-host, exclusive conversation around the role of data, data for good and bad. We always cover the role of data. We just talk about AI and data for good, but in this exclusive interview, and we have some exclusive material about data for bad. And Dave, we've been talking about weaponizing data a year ago on SiliconANGLE on theCUBE around how data is being weaponized. It's certainly the elections. We know the Russians were involved. We know that data, you can buy journalists, you can create fake news, and for every click bait in fake news is bad content, but also on the other side, there's good bait, good news. So, the world's changing. There needs to be a better place. There needs to be some action taken because there's now evidence that the role the Russians had using fake news and weaponizing it to sway the election and other things has been out there. And so, this is something that we've been talking about. Yeah, I mean, the signature of the hacks is pretty clear. I think there's a distinct signature when you talk to the experts of when it's China or when it's Russia, Russia's very clever about the way they target somebody who's maybe a pawn when they try to make him or her feel like a king, grab their credentials, and then work their way in. They've been doing this for decades, right? And the thing is too, is that now it's not just state-sponsored. There's new groups out there that can enable open-source tools, we've reported on theCUBE, that the terrorist organizations and bad actors are taking open-source tools and threats from state nations posing as threats to democracy in the U.S. and other countries. This is a huge problem. And it's, in a way, it's harder than the nuclear problem we had weapons pointed at each other, right? This is, you know, the United States has a lot to lose. If we go on the offense, well, others can attack us and attack our systems, which are pretty mature. So recently, we talked to Gary Kasparov. I had an exclusive interview with him. He's very outspoken. Kasparov is the greatest chess player in history by most accounts. And he is a political activist, he's an author, and he had a number of things to say about this. Let's listen to him. It's about a couple of minute clip and then we'll come back and talk about it. Watch this. Knowing Vladimir Putin and the mentality, the KGB mentality and the way he has been approaching the global problems, I had no doubts that the question was not if Putin would attack somewhere, but the question is when and where. So, and the attack on U.S. democracy was a surprise here, but it was not a surprise for us because we could see how they build these capabilities for more than a decade. Because they have been creating this fake news industry in Russia to deal with Russian opposition in 2004, 2005. Then they used it against neighboring countries like Estonia in 2007. Then they moved to Eastern Europe and then to Western Europe. So when they ended up attacking the United States, they already had almost a decade of experience. And it's quite unfortunate that while there was plenty of information about this attacks, the previous administration decided just to take it easy. And the result is that we had this case of interference. I hope there will be more indictments. I hope we'll get to the bottom of that. Because we know that they are still pretty active in Europe. And they will never cease there. Germany, France. Exactly, but I call Putin merchant of doubts. Because unlike Soviet propaganda machine, he's not selling you one ideology. All he wants is to spread chaos. So that's why it's not about telling, oh, this is the only the right teaching. No, no, no. Oh, it's wrong. It's wrong. Everything, yeah. Maybe there are 10 different ways of saying the truth. Truth is relative. And that's a very powerful message because it's spreading these doubts. And he's very good in just creating these confusions and actually bringing people just to fight each other. And I have to say he succeeded in an order. Our president has taken a page out of that, unfortunately. But I also think the big issue we face as a country in the United States is 2020 is the election in 2020 is going to be about who leverages social media and the weaponization of social media. And the Russian attackers, you talked to the black cats, very sophisticated, very intriguing how they come in. They find the credentials. But look, we know just every expert knows that in this industry, if you are trying to defend yourself, if you're on the defense all the time, you will lose. It's a losing proposition. So the only way to deter the aggression is to make sure that there will be sort of counterattacks so that there will be devastating blood to those who are attacking the United States. And you need the political will because technology is here. America stills the leading power in the world. But the political will, unfortunately. However, I will say that, but it's different than with nuclear warheads. When Robert Gates was on the cube, he said to me, yeah, I asked him about offense versus defense. He said the only thing about the United States is we have a lot to lose. So we have to be careful about how aggressive we can be. No, exactly. But it's just, yes, it's a great era of uncertainty. What can you lose if you show strength? But I can tell you exactly how you're going to lose everything if you are not vigilant. If you are not deterrent, if you are not sending the right signal to Putin so as well that aggression against America will have the prize that he cannot bear. So John, pretty unequivocal comments from Gary Kasparov. So a lot of people don't believe that you can actually manipulate social media that way. You've been in social for a long time since the beginning days. Maybe you could explain how one, a country, or a state-sponsored terrorism, how would they go about manipulating individuals? You know, Dave, I've been involved in the internet infrastructure from the beginning days of Web 1.0 and through search engines, student of the data. I've seen the data. I've seen the data that we have from our media company. I've seen the data on Facebook. And here's the deal. There's bad actors doing fake news, controlling everything, creating bad outcomes. It's important for everyone to understand that there's an actual opposite spectrum, which is the exact opposite of the bad. There's a good version. So what we can learn from this is that there's a positive element of this, if you can believe it, which is there's actually a way to make it work for good. And that is trust, high quality data, reputation in context. That is a very hard problem. Facebook's trying to solve it. You know, we're working on solving that. But here's the anatomy of the hack. If you control the narrative, you can control the meme. If you can control the meme, you can control the idea. If you can control the idea, you can control the belief system. If you can control the belief system, you can control the population. That is exactly what has happened with the election. That is what's happening now in social networks. That's why so many people are turning off the social networks is because this is hackable. You can actually hack the brains and outcomes of people because controlling the narrative, controlling the meme, controlling the idea, controlling the belief system, you can impact the population. That has absolutely been done. Without firing a shot. Without firing a shot. This is the new cold social networking wars that are going on. And again, that has been identified, but there's an opposite effect. And the opposite effect is having a trust system, a shortcut to trust. There will be a Google in our future, Google like what Google did to search engines. There will be for social networks. And that is whoever can nail the trust, the reputation, context, what is real and what is not will ultimately have all the users go into their doorstep. This is the opportunity for news organizations, for platforms, and it's all going to be driven by new infrastructure, new software. This is something we could learn from, but there is a way to hack. It's been done. I just laid it out. That's what's happening. Will blockchain play a role in solving this problem of reputation in your opinion? Well, you know, I believe that centralized is bad. Because you can hack a centralized database and the data ownership is huge. I personally believe that blockchain and this notion of decentralized data ownership will ultimately go back to the people and that the decentralized applications and cryptocurrency leads a path. It's not yet proven. There's no clear visibility yet, but many believe that the wallet is the new browser and that cryptocurrency can put the power into the people so that new data can emerge to vet a person who says there's something that they're not, news that says there's something that they're not. This is a trust. This is something that is not yet available. That's what I'm saying. You can't get it with Google. You can't get it with Facebook. You can't get it in these platforms. So the world has to change at an infrastructure level. That's the opportunity to blockchain. Aside from all the things like who's going to give the power for the miners and variety of technical issues, but conceptually, there is a path there. That's a new democracy. This is a global phenomenon. It's a societal change. This is so cutting edge, but it gets very promising at the same time. This is super important because I can't tell you. I mean, how many times have you received an email from one political persuasion or the other that lays out emphatically that this individual did that and you do some research and you find out it's fake news. It happens all the time. There's no context of these platforms. Facebook optimizes their data for advertising optimization and you're going to see data being optimized for user control, community control, community curation, more objective, not subjective data. This is the new algorithm. This is where machine learning and AI will make a difference. This is the new trust equation that will emerge. This is a phenomenal opportunity for entrepreneurs. If you're in the media business and you're not thinking about this, you will be out of business. That's our opinion. Excellent, John. Well, thanks for your thoughts and sharing with us how these hacks are done. This is real, the midterm elections 2020 is really going to be won or lost on social media. I appreciate that. And Facebook's fumbling and they're going to try to do good. We'll see what they do. All right. All right. It's a wrap. Good job. Thanks for watching.