Speaker
Nick Fountain
Appearances over time
2 episodes
Episodes
2
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
The Stuxnet cyberweapon reportedly destroyed approximately one-fifth of all centrifuges Iran was using in its uranium enrichment program.
The customs chief overseeing Desmond Shum's Beijing airport logistics hub demanded basketball courts, a theater, a banquet hall, and a karaoke bar — adding $50 million to the project cost.
FAST16 was developed around 2005, the same era as Stuxnet, and shares similar architecture though no shared code.
After paying $50 million in demanded amenities, Desmond Shum and his wife still sold the Beijing airport logistics hub for close to $200 million in profit.
FAST16 was designed to corrupt calculations in LSDyna (Livermore Software Dynamic Analysis), a complex physics modeling program used by Iranian nuclear scientists for explosive materials simulations.
When contacted, the NSA, CIA, and Israeli Defense Forces all declined to confirm or deny involvement with FAST16; the IDF never responded at all.
Jags and Vitaly were finally able to announce FAST16 as a major cyberweapon in April of 2025, years after Jags first encountered the cryptic NSA listing.
Jags works for SentinelOne, a cybersecurity company that protects major clients including Samsung, the Golden State Warriors, and the U.S. government.
By 2021, Evergrande had accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars in debt and began missing payments, eventually defaulting.
Out of an entire leaked NSA malware list, one entry stood completely apart: 'FAST16, nothing to see here, carry on' — in all caps, with no standard warning or instruction. For cyber paleontologist Jags, this wasn't a dismissal. It was an irresistible invitation.
Jags reverse-engineers old malware buried deep on servers to understand how hackers got in and what they did — so future attacks can be stopped. His work is significant enough to have pieces displayed at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.
Before Stuxnet, offensive cyberweapons were theoretical. Then Israel and the U.S. allegedly used malware to make Iran's uranium enrichment centrifuges spin themselves to destruction — all while showing normal readings on every computer screen. It destroyed one-fifth of Iran's centrifuges and proved that code could have real-world physical consequences.
Jags's colleague Vitaly Kamluk disappeared for two weeks into the FAST16 problem, using AI to verify his reverse engineering. What emerged: FAST16 targeted high-precision floating-point math — a type of calculation no malware had ever targeted before, and the exclusive territory of nuclear physicists.
FAST16 didn't just corrupt one machine — it spread computer to computer and gave the exact same wrong answer on every one. That coherence was the point: the sabotage looked like human error, not malware. Scientists would doubt themselves before they'd doubt their computers.
FAST16 hid silently on computers until it detected the specific pressure calculations used to simulate a nuclear explosion. Then it corrupted the math just enough to produce consistently wrong answers — on every machine, every time. Scientists would blame themselves long before suspecting their computers.
Certainty isn't coherent deduction — it's a background assumption that lets you function. FAST16 weaponized that assumption, forcing scientists to question not just their results but their own competence. Jags, a philosophy dropout turned hacker, calls this 'epistemological warfare.'
The NSA's own malware detection tool included FAST16 — but instead of a standard 'pull back' warning, it simply said 'nothing to see here, carry on.' The agency apparently didn't deny authorship to Jags either, reportedly signaling: this is 20-year-old history, not a secret worth protecting now.
The string of bytes in FAST16's code matched LSDyna, a physics modeling program. A think tank report revealed that Iranian nuclear scientists were using LSDyna specifically to simulate explosive materials for nuclear payloads — confirming FAST16's likely target with chilling precision.
On a driverless train in Singapore, Vitaly pointed out this was exactly the kind of system FAST16-style malware could degrade. There'd been a collision recently. Officials said no cyberattack was involved. Jags and Vitaly looked at each other and said: 'Well, as far as we know.'
After months of fruitless nights failing to decode FAST16, Jags made a decision most researchers wouldn't: he tattooed 'FAST16, nothing to see here, carry on' on his arm — a permanent reminder of the unsolved mystery he refused to abandon.
A Zi quit her job, then secretly pretended to go to work every morning for months — leaving home in business clothes and spending the day in cafes drawing. China's 996 work culture (9am to 9pm, six days a week) drove her out, and she's one of tens of millions in the same boat.
China's senior leadership has, at various points, been entirely composed of engineers — and engineers build. The problem is when they apply that same literal mindset to society, treating human beings as building materials to be moved and remolded.
Guizhou, China's fourth-poorest province, has 50 of the world's tallest bridges and roughly 13 airports — some with only a few flights per week. It's a monument to prestige projects over people's actual needs.
Three private jets flew to France — two of them empty — so real estate moguls could play cards. Meanwhile $10,000 watches were handed out as 'tributes of respect.' This was the apex of China's real estate era, and it was hiding a catastrophic crash.
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