it's ended monday with packed show today so let's dive right in. and we leave the program with one of the biggest attacks on u.s. infrastructure in history ransom seeking hackers have broken into the colonial pipeline one of the largest pipelines in the nation as it provides fuel for 45 percent of the eastern united states forcing it to be effectively shut down now colonial pipeline and the u.s. government have both blamed ransomware for the massive outage is pointing the finger at cyber criminal gangs who routinely hold data and computer networks hostage in exchange for digital currency payments joining us now to discuss is cyber security expert and president of dark intel todd shipley bus co-host and investigative journalist ben swan now ben i want to start with you here what can you tell us about the shutdown and who is actually behind it. yes so it's a pretty major shutdown as you're describing here 45 percent of all the energy supply for the east coast runs through this one pipeline which is based by the way

right here in the atlanta area in alpharetta georgia but its injury is taking fuel all the way through the east coast all the way through louisiana and then into texas ultimately to houston that's where it runs and what we're talking about here is about 2500000 barrels a day of everything from diesel to gasoline to jet fuel that run through this pipeline so there's a lot that's at stake here there's a lot of infrastructure that's being affected by it that includes not only you know gasoline and the gasoline supply on the east coast but it also includes fuel for airports so the charlotte airport relies heavily on this pipeline for its fuel as does the atlanta hartsfield jackson airport the busiest airport in the world in atlanta so all of these issues are kind of you know piling up on top of each other and what we know is that it's been 4 days now that this pipeline has been shut down because of hackers who were able to implicate it what they're asking for as you said is some kind of a ransom payment that we don't exactly know who these folks are there is a suspicion that it's

a group called the dark side but we don't actually know that for sure they have not claimed responsibility nor has colonial pipeline said exactly who is making these demands of. that group that is the expected of being behind the attack as ben just mentioned called the dark side a new but professional group of criminals believed to be operating out of the former soviet republics what do we know about this group in your cybersecurity expertise. well we know if you things obviously we know that last august they announced themselves that they were going to come on to the scene and provide ransomware to companies to blackmail them through a press release so they went out and said we're coming for everybody except for they are very careful to say that we're not going to hospitals and some other places that these ransomware groups have got a bad name from and that they were going to donate a portion of their. proceeds that they obtain to charities and they've done some of that so far that we've i'd been a but they haven't identified but the group as been said we think it's out of the

former soviet union the code that's been reviewed by some of the companies looks like it's from that region in particular because they've. taken the point to not attack countries from the former soviet union those block countries and they do this for a reason so that they can you know independently work in the soviet union without the law enforcement will go after them and only go after western countries. you know as a kind of measure you kind of set this up how exactly are these cyber criminal organizations make money is it all through cryptocurrency payments and is there danger in making payments in the way that this will encourage more of this future and on top of that i'd like you to address to you know as to just mentioned there it seems like they're trying to say they're robin-hood here that they you know they're taking from the wealthy they're going to give it to charity i mean what do we need to know about all that yet well there's a couple of important points there let's start with the last one yes they actually

do kind of set themselves up as to be a robin hood as type of group from the rich we steal from big corporations and governments around the world and then we give away a portion of the proceeds to charity which is kind of an interesting kind of i guess spin on it if you will yeah they do receive through cryptocurrency and this does happen in other places look i think there's a certain segment of the population by the way that actually would like this kind of thing not like it in terms of just necessarily thinking these are the good guys but just in terms of saying hey if you're stealing from you know a big oil company if you're stealing from a company called colonial pipeline what harm are you really causing now obviously there's a lot of harm being caused here especially since the down effect of all of this does impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people potentially but in terms of these organizations you asked the question about whether or not this encourages that if you. the ransom so right now nothing's being said about what the ransom is exactly how much it is and how it would be paid but this is not the 1st time this is happens happened with a lot of different entities and it happens with municipalities especially hackers

go in they freeze up computers to a certain city so they can access certain records and then they demand a ransom payment and what we know about that is i'm not advocating for it but we know that it's many times cheaper to actually pay the ransom then it is to all the cost that goes into getting these guys out of the system and trying to secure it so again it's a complicated situation especially in this situation where time is of the essence to be able to make sure that fuel is delivered in a timely manner the one positive is we're not in the winter months when you're cutting this off so it does have at least it's not hurting people in terms of needing that heating fuel which you need on the east coast. a u.s. senator bill cassidy's a republican louisiana who sits on the energy committee he said lawmakers are prepared to work more with privately held critical infrastructure companies to guard against cyber attacks and what kind of support should congress be given these private companies and just how vulnerable is the energy infrastructure to these types of tags and to

a certain extent i apologize for talking too much here but to ben's point you know this isn't the 1st time we did these stories on blue bus you know a year year and a half 2 years ago about these municipalities who were hit by these ransomware attacks so it's not like we didn't know this was possible and just now it's a big company like this and now all of a sudden we want to address this so what can they do and how vulnerable are we to. take the latter 1st is we're vulnerable there's no doubt about that and i think it's evidence by the fact that you've been running these stories for a number of years and i've i've talked about this on your show before about these ransomware attacks and how vulnerable companies and municipalities are i think what's changed is the fact that they've gone from asking for a few $1000.00 to now millions of dollars in a local government doesn't have. money to pay but the big companies do and so now they've started looking at those big companies because it's a much bigger payday and that's why they're going after it now as what can congress

do well the problem is throwing money at this is not going to solve the problem we've got to have a better understanding of what the infrastructure is and where the problems lie within that now that certainly is not something we want to publicize because then the you know attackers will be able to find it but we've got to work better within congress to provide the training and understanding of how to protect the systems and take a better effort that this is actually an attack on the united states and not just one company because if you go to dark sides website right now on the darkness on tor there's a list of the companies that they've attacked in this is not just the only one they've attacked some since then so this is going to be an ongoing problem and we've got to really research how we're going to you know look at this and change this from a threat to a positive force now ben but before we go what is the biden ministration doing in the short term to help and how is this going to affect gas prices that i have about 30 seconds yeah i can at the gas prices i think already the gas prices on the east

coast are expected to jump between $22.30 a gallon so that's already starting to happen by the ministration is relieving some of the rules on big rigs and tanker trucks on the highways as they try to move more fuel that way so it's mark last thing i would say very quickly is that part of the answer to this problem might be in being less dependent on these kinds of technical logical systems being more dependent on the human workforce and less on the tech side i know that goes counter to what we believe but it would actually open yourself up to fewer attacks if you were to do that more human dependence through cobb's shipley president of dark intel and boom bust co-host ben swan thank you so much for the analysis today thanks. and several leaders in the european union have raised doubts that a us call to wave patterns for coping $1000.00 vaccines would help the global

vaccination drive in the short term e.u. leaders spoke about the situation during a social policy summit over the weekend in portugal claiming more exports and increased production would offer the needed help. this is an export. since and we encourage all to do for the export of those and. if they were killed. we don't think. it's the magic bullet for. this. would be. i made clear here already that i do not believe that releasing patents is the solution to provide more people rather i believe we need the creativity an ability to innovate and for me to temperature action. it is all about the question of how we can get as many vaccines for as many people in the world in the shortest period of time for that to be granted and what

companies that is happening are huge quantities in a timely manner priority it was not had. would be lying to. production what is blocking surviving today 1st of all you must say when i'm out of what you have produced. in the united states and 100 percent of what has been produced has been used on the domestic market that's the 1st back to the so 1st of all the anglo-saxon stuff they're banned on exports the 2nd factor is to convert factories to produce more vaccine as has been done more and more in europe it's technology transfer that's. last week u.s. president joe biden supported a call from south africa and india to waive patent protection for the vaccine citing extraordinary circumstances related to the ongoing pandemic. and india is continuing to deal with the world's worst covert outbreak the world's 2nd most populous nation on monday reported near record highs in new cases and deaths while

many indian states have large scale lock 1000 places many are calling for prime minister narendra modi to institute a nationwide lockdown for more on the latest let's bring in our to correspondent side savage or francis saying in india right now if you look at the cases and deaths happening right now there's actually little hope of the curve or trend going just on sunday india reported more than $4000.00 additional deaths that brings the total to $235000.00 plus experts believe that figure the 235000 total to be a significant undercount now the w.h.o. has also just announced a new highly contagious triple mutant coated variant spreading it india as what they're calling variant of concern indicating that it's become a global health threat now a variant can be labeled as of concern if it has been shown to be more contagious more deadly and more resistant to the current vaccines we have right now and

treatments now apart from imposing a nationwide lockdown in india which many are calling for vaccinations really india's only hope in fighting against a pandemic however many parts of india still face a shortage of vaccine supplies to actually come up with the vaccines and the u.s. has been specially criticized for or reading and restricting the export of over 1000 vaccine raw materials specially to our head countries like india now the other major debate has been on getting the vaccine to places like india or even south africa has been for countries not just countries i should say and pharmaceutical companies to ease hadn't rules on coal that 19 vaccines and like you mentioned earlier the buy to administration has advocated for a waving. goes into not an intellectual property rights for covert jobs but countries with large pharmaceutical companies like germany said they would impose

any plans to waive patent laws and called the 1000 bags seen and i should also mention that it's not just countries but major drug companies like pfizer and even return a that strongly opposed plans to waive even temporarily intellectual property rights on vaccines you know they argue that the move would threaten their future and innovations of brant announce our own lives back to the united states and how we're doing in cases in the vaccination process at this time what are the numbers so unlike india the u.s. in the u.s. not a single state is reporting it increasing cases in the past week compared to the previous week plus a majority of the 33rd states total are reporting actually decreasing cases now nationwide cases are down 30 percent that's they're down 6 percent and also the major factor for the rate has been

a measure says the major reason for this rate going down has been vaccinations in us where over 34 percent are not fully vaccinated and brand of the current pace of vaccination they're receiving right now in the u.s. everyone can get a shot of this of course in 1000 racks in this year r.t. correspondent sites out there thank you so much for keeping us up to date. found out for a quick break but when we come back cryptocurrency had a wild weekend as a period of new record highs in oil it took a dive we'll break it all down on the other side and as we get a break here the numbers of close.

americans love. this was a fundamental part of how our political leadership and our country at large understood the bargain you get a home and then you'll rebel right that's the things you don't revolt if you have a stake in the system. and be really interesting to dial it back and think about the longer deeper history housings man in the united states not just back question of the american dream the bigger question if you dream is for. but if you want me to put up with a chance. to degrade the idea of

a major overhaul of the bush's last push to keep the interview. which 93 did that i didn't know was reasonable because i have my think if you. let your local fish not go for the before bill and want to be sure that it is the basically she is that issue or a small bubble the worst of us were simply she. told the public school that wants this issue will. go well for you really. it's not out of the store to get to eat it and if we do buy as of much of what you mean yes the clutter ceased door rama as they should but they see it because when you get out of the sky. it's nice and you're sure it's the pizza pizza off of what you imagine it's just. by the thunder make no certainly no borders i'm just blind to nationalities.

as much we caught up with the we don't look back seem the whole world beat's to be the chief. judge of this commentary crisis with this system to. get better we should. everyone is contributing each or our own way but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenges created the response has been masked so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we're in it together.

and welcome back the pentagon is contemplating scrapping its jet i cloud computing project as the u.s. government faces litigation from amazon according to a new report from the wall street journal the $10000000000.00 project was awarded to microsoft in 2019 in the last month a us federal claims judge refused to dismiss a challenge from amazon which argues the contract process was influenced by then president donald trump the report from the journal references comments made by deputy defense secretary kathleen hicks no following the ruling when she said quote we're going to have to assess where we are with regards to the ongoing litigation around jet i and determine what the best path forward is for the department pentagon report to congress from january also raised questions about the future of the contract saying quote the prospect of such

a lengthy litigation process might bring the future of the jet i cloud procurement into question. and while there has been so much talk about new records in crypto currency well it's a different story for us equities monday with the dow touching record highs early in the day before boiling pulling back to near even at the close while the tech heavy nasdaq lost more than 2 percent on the day so let's go ahead and take a look at what's happening with the open smith is c.e.o. of transforming research and boom bust co-host christine christy i want to start with you it seems like tech is no longer the market darling anymore what's going on here. well right now it's kind of like big tech and small caps the kicking hard today and that would normally be interpreted as a risk off moment but it's actually more neutral there's just a slight little rotation going on here as investors are swapping out girls' names for value names so in particular it was kind of

a surprising call that citi it's internet analyst downgraded apple alphabet they spoke to neutral from buy as he cautioned companies that derive revenue from digital advertising so he highlighted during the last 15 years internet as a joke 3 periods of accelerating growth and repeats of decelerating growth and right now where in the middle of that the sorry period so gross it's likely going to be very difficult year over year given difficult comes ahead as there's very little evidence of at intensity per dollar of economic activity rising and with casebook essentially making up nearly half of the fangs the price action tech has been especially frustrating so facebook fellow or 4 percent amazon an alpha that fell more than 2 percent and many thought that the move from friday would follow through and elicit a more sustainable rebound in the space but instead that group is being aggressive selling today and accumulating a lot of technical damage as the levels of support so right now the market also playing this game of expectation versus reality the markets well price for

reopening with expectation the rameses pent up demand narrative but if it fails to materialize there's a lot of room to fall as a rally has been overextended. you know with all this as a backdrop we're gearing up for a busy earnings week with a bunch of recent mortgage set to report including bumble coin base roadblocks in posh marc what should we expect from these names and have they gotten a little bit too hyped up. well i think you've got to step back a little bit here we have our you know we've talked about in our newsletters and our managed accounts people that we've had a change in inflation expectations and with all due respect when inflation rates go high we have 10 different forms of inflation that's essentially like over powering the deflationary side we've had 12 years of deflation with amazon prices in e-commerce prices coming down and so on and so forth that we overall had no inflation now that we have governments that will spend an unlimited amount of money

print. unlimited out of money. you know we we have actual not enough supply in more demand that's called cost push or pull that's inflation so tech stocks that are to be discounted out 5 to 10 years have to now raise the deficit because interest rates are going to go up because of this inflation that's what that's what bonds do bonds are the ultimate interest or inflation hedge and or certainly barometer so we should expect higher rates we should expect much higher prices look at copper look at we look at quarter look at anything you eat or you put your car and then on top of everything else we've got semiconductor shortages which is stopping production so i've never seen in all the 30 years that i've been in this industry i've never seen this many inflation creators and drivers all at one time so that's why tech is be used as a source of funds what have we bought in the last 5 weeks freeport back around for

copper we brought c.b.x. chevron we've you know lumber excedrin we're making great money with that but you know what we're selling we're selling those tech stocks so they're now a source of funds in christie i want to move into a broader technology discussion i guess. cryptocurrency which is kind of the new darling in as big point sits around the $60000.00 mark it broke $4000.00 for the 1st time on monday but some analysts there are saying it is overvalued at current levels what do you think about that claim. i mean how is aids overvalued here because we don't say telcel is overvalued because apparently tesla is worth more than toyota now even though toyota sells 30 times more cars and tesla last year but apparently the market is increasing as that continues to rally up to sell no it's not overvalued seeing as it's being fueled by expectations of a wider new space partly on its role in the fi so there's more than 150000000000

dollars in total value locked all across these the 5 platforms with most of the action now running on the area so even other sectors like insurance and derivatives there are also growing and institutional investors have also warmed up to ease and it's a portion of total cryptocurrency market value now stands at over 18 percent compared to $42.00 so essentially is the pioneer of all programmable clock chains and the enabler of all the popular products coming out including d 5 n f t's so if we see a price appreciation of quite as a signal of crypto currency being favored as an investor will asset its price spike should also be the signal that block change based applications are being acknowledged and adopted so each has the potential to take over 25 percent of the total market cap as the market of cryptocurrency is mature and last week we also the asset manager van accepting an application to launch an e.t.f. so right now there's a lot of momentum here as they transition from approval work to proof of state law

change so it's not all speculation that's driving it it's a real network eternity and as such institutional managers they're continuing to help support these higher prices institutional is now hold about $13900000000.00 worth of heat across the board. here's another one for you george coyne was it was down nearly 40 percent after c.e.o. elon musk saturday night live appearance so was this just a big pump and dump scheme is there any value to doe's calling. you know it's a good sense of an indicator that's exactly what it is and if you were a subscriber we owned dogecoin into s n l we sold you know on saturday morning and it was we were doing it for fun i was just doing it for giggles to show that sentiment is one thing value is another one that i'll go with your other guests point remember that if syria and this block chain is is essentially disrupting financial services and we pay for financial

services whether it's interest or late fees or whatever it's about a $42.00 trillion dollar total address market for all those fees. lease payments being rent paying you know credit card payment is you start to disrupt that stuff and have a unit of trust and that's what these defy coins are they're a unit of trust. all of a sudden banking business is that used to charge you know what used to be $750.00 now it's $250.00 for a you know a bad charities me go to prison fund now it's going to be 0 and so that's why these things are exploding because it works and it takes it takes the banks out of the out of the business tobin smith of transforming research and boom bust co-host christi i feel like we're going to go ahead a little bit of back and forth there but unfortunately we're out of time thank you both for your time today. and that's it for this time you can catch boom bust on demand on portable t.v. available on smartphones and tablets through google play in the apple app store by

searching portable t.v. but if you can also be downloaded a newer model samsung smart t.v.'s as well as roku devices simply check it out a portable the t.v. will see you next time. that is when you can put up with the chairs. ready to go the idea for a major overhaul social slawson just took a kid into it. which 90 students that doesn't know is reasonable because a lot of mining. pleasure who fish now go for building water should that it is that they took the stage because if this were a small boat with us from the us we simply she could. political would scold wants

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worst tension for years between israel and palestine dozens are killed in schools injured after hundreds of airstrikes and huge protests on correspondence in the thick of the action. there are many that are happening for the pot of money no way to escape it's kind of an aid and simply a flare up in violence. and so on the way the german and the from the left party visits moscow to get russia's covert vaccine something that's still impossible to do in germany today invensys frustrations watty about his country's vaccination campaign and the stumbling blocks the e.u.'s placed in front of.