“We want to see them safe, happy, and living fulfilling lives. And we're going to do whatever the hell we can, whenever the hell we can, to help people like the Ukrainians because they deserve a peaceful, good life. And we have not lost a single ounce of steam,” reflects Joe Marshall, Senior IoT Security Strategist at Cisco Talos. - Joe Marshall In this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t, Bryson and Joe discuss Cisco’s efforts in the Ukraine war.
Joe Marshall is a Senior IoT Security Strategist at Cisco Talos Intelligence Group. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Joe helped coordinate a multinational, multi-company coalition of volunteers and experts to find a technological solution.
Bryson and Joe sat down to discuss his efforts in Ukraine, how he got the go-ahead from Cisco leadership, and more.
“They were like, yeah, we can't even get accurate timing to work on our transmission grid because of jamming that is interrupting GPS communications,” Joe explains. “A week later I was sitting in my office and I went, ‘I wonder if we have something inside of Cisco that can actually help with this.’”
Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plan[e]t.
Hack the Plant is brought to you by ICS Village and the Institute for Security and Technology.
Bryson: I'm Bryson Bort, and this is Hack the Plant, season four. Electricity, finance, transportation, our water supply. We take these critical infrastructure systems for granted. But they're all becoming increasingly dependent on computers to function. We walk through the world of hackers working on front lines of cybersecurity and public safety to protect the systems you rely upon every day.
From the ransomware threats of Colonial Pipeline to the failure of the Texas power grid, it is clear our interconnectivity is also a significant source of risk. This season, we will continue to bring you a panoply of different insights across all of the different things happening in critical infrastructure.
In my day job, I'm the CEO and founder of Scythe and the co-founder with Tom VanNorman of the non profit ICS Village, where we educate people on critical infrastructure security with hands-on examples, not just nerd stuff. I founded Grimm in 2013, a consultancy that works at the front lines of these problems every day for clients all over the world.
I'm also an adjunct senior advisor at the Institute for Security and Technology, a 501(c)(3) think tank dedicated to tackling technology-driven emerging security threats. This is Hack the Plant, brought to you by the Institute for Security and Technology and ICS Village. Subscribe wherever you find podcasts to get each episode when it drops.
Bryson: This is Hack the Plant, a podcast from the ICS Village. Catch us at an event near you. Subscribe wherever you find podcasts to get episodes as soon as they're released. Thanks for listening.
Bryson: I’m Bryson Bort and this is Hack the Plant.
For today’s episode, I’m joined by Joe Marshall, a senior security strategist for Talos’ Strategic Communications team, one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world. Joe specializes in industrial control systems, critical infrastructure protection, and IoT device security. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its first winter in late 2022, nearly half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure had been destroyed, leaving millions without power. The resulting energy deficit has exacerbated something that hasn’t had much media attention: The effects of electronic GPS jammers on vital electrical equipment. We learn how Joe helped coordinate a multinational, multi-company coalition of volunteers and experts to find a technological solution.
Joe: “...I was so enraptured by the stories of hardship and innovation and things they were doing to be able to just keep the lights on and they mentioned something really offhand. Like it was just like item one of 50 that they brought up to me and it's actually the least sexy of all the things they were mentioning had nothing to do with guns or missiles or whatever. And they were like, yeah, we can't even get accurate timing to work on our transmission grid because of jamming that is interrupting GPS communications and this little thing in the back of my head went off and it goes, Hey, that's really important for synchro phaser management and for, you know, being able to monitor the health of the grid. And that was the push that was the thing. And, you know, a week later I was sitting in my office and I went, I wonder if we have something inside of Cisco that can actually help with this. And my little neurodivergent brain just wouldn't let go of it. And it was just this weird one off thing. And I went, nah, we got to have something. The answer is we did not. And we would have to go make that thing, but the journey to get there was emotional highs and lots of lows, but we got it.
Bryson: We discuss how a conversation over dinner set him on a trajectory that would eventually help solve a country-level threat in Ukraine.
Joe: …and it was sort of just dumb luck, but to get their buy in, I basically had to go use the secret sauce and the secret sauce other than force of personality and or blackmail was engaging something called the critical accounts team inside of Cisco. So we have a team inside of Cisco that answers only to our CEO and the executive, the senior executive leadership team, and they are often referred to as Cap Critical Action Programs and basically their job is to do whatever it takes to make things right and whether a customer has an issue or a country gets invaded. It is their job to utilize the full resources of Cisco to set the ship right, and then move on to the next crisis.
Bryson: And learn how Joe got the buy-in from senior leadership at Cisco to deploy a critical accounts team to assist Ukraine through the war.
What is an APT kegerator and what does it have to do with cybersecurity? Why is maintaining grid synchronization so important? And if he could wave a magic, non-Internet-connected wand, what is one thing he would change? Join us for this and more on this episode of Hack the Plant.
Bryson: What mistakes in life led you to being on this podcast?
Joe: Hanging around a disreputable bunch of reprobates and ne'er do wells that is the ICS security community, such as yourself and myself. And many, many fine individuals whom I've had the absolute pleasure to just get to know over the years. It has been one of the, I think, true highlights of being in this biz, right?
It's, it's cybersecurity is, is fairly niche as careers go, right? We talk about like DEF CON. DEF CON is coming up, you know, in the summer. And we have like, what? 40 to 50,000 people might attend DEF CON, or it's a big number or something like that. The Mopar show they host yearly in Vegas does like 250, 000. So like, you know, it kind of puts it all in a scale when you think about like, communities of interest. And We're fairly even more niche than that, you and me, because we operate in these, Industrial Control System or critical infrastructure circles, which is an even further refinement of cyber security. And gosh, we all just know each other or know of each other.
We're all handsome, well spoken, articulate. Wery, very smart, brilliant, et cetera, et cetera. Game knows game, right? I'm just saying, you know, and here we are, you and I chatting on this lovely, lovely podcast of yours.
Bryson: Well, before DEF CON, of course, is our policy conference, Hack the Capitol. I believe you probably are going to be speaking there, and you certainly will be there.
Joe: Yes, I have never heard of this amazing conference, and I cannot wait to attend, as that's what the teleprompter is telling me.
Bryson: In addition, I think you and I have an interesting intertwined career relationship, which we didn't figure out until a couple of years ago. So it started from my side, what, eight, nine? Nine, nine years ago, I had seen the Talos, Cisco-Talos beer capture the flag. I'll let you describe it. But from my view, I saw that I was like, wow, what a great way to engage and to get folks interested in industrial control systems and embedded devices.
We should build something like that at Grimm, and where we came up with our smart house, Howdy Neighbor, which was in tons of interconnected embedded devices and consumer IOT, including ones that we made up to try to do that. And that was based on the inspiration from that project from you. So I'll throw it back over to you on what that project was, and then your view of where you had seen what I had been doing.
Joe: Dude, Howdy Neighbor and your car automation hacking rig were some of the funnest, coolest things I've seen. And it feels really cool to have been sort of a catalyst to generate spark and passion to do that stuff. We called it APT, our little kegerator. Advanced Persistent Thirst. And we 3D printed our own custom tap tower with electro solenoid taps that push open when you press a button on a Rockwell HMI.
And the whole thing had its own industrialized Wi-Fi on it, and you can connect to it. And the riddle was to make a pour beer without touching a single button. You know, you inject commands because it's not authenticated. You seem to know to speak the language it wants to hear. And I had just come working from an electric utility and I was shooting the breeze with our vice president outside.
And I said, wouldn't it be cool if we mounted a PLC to a keg of beer? And he looks at me and goes, well, now you've got three months to do it because you said it in front of me. I was like damn. So I had to go hire this amazing, amazing team of just stone cold, competent, awesome professionals from all walks of life.
And they were able to make a prototype within about three to six months. We got really, really far. And then we took it on the road and took it to S4, took it to Dirty Con. We even had a little custom crate made for it so we could ship it places. And I think of all the places that I've taken it, it's only really been hacked 11 times.
It's not a easy riddle to solve, especially if you're an outsider, you're not super industrial control system savvy on protocols and network configurations and whatnot. And I hired one of the guys who figured it out. He had never even touched ICS before. It took him two and a half days at Dirty Con, and he got it to violently eject beer.
We actually had to physically turn it off because he figured out how to open the tap, but not how to close the tap. And I was like, ah, good enough. And I hired that guy. So we made a inadvertent interview tool as well, which is pretty cool. So very serendipitous, and we still have it at the Talos offices today, although it's got a little bit of dust on it.
We don't have kegs of beer in it. We just use it as a normal beer fridge. But all the equipment in the process control network is still bolted to it and just humming along looking cool.
Bryson: I thought that was so cool where we finally got to meet. And I was like, Oh yeah, you inspired me. And you're like, Oh, well, you also did that. And we, we'd had this parallel of really working with each other without actually working with each other.
Bryson: How did you get into industrial control systems?
Joe: I didn't. It found me. I was working for a defense contractor, and one of the most formative places of my career, a place called the Department of Defense Cybercrime Center, and I was a contractor there doing operations, but they let me dabble in InfoSec. Quite a bit, actually, especially with the DICE guys, they were really, really kind to me and really kind of gave me some new mentorship. I had to leave that contract, and I was kind of adrift just for a little bit, and this company called Baltimore Gas and Electric would not take no for an answer for an interview.
And I said, okay, fine. I'll go do it. Not knowing that–I was only vaguely educated on some aspects of OT and ICS, like advanced metering infrastructure and things like that. And I guess something about me in the interview, they're like, you know what? There's enough, we can invest in you. We're going to bring you aboard and make you a security architect for the OT side of the house and some IT stuff too here in Maryland.
And I was like, wow. Okay. Well, I'm sorry if I turn off the power accidentally or something like that. And they're like, nah, you're fine. And that's just kind of how I landed into it. And that would be a very brief but wild time where I got exposed to and learned so much. And it was the spark, I guess, that sent me down this path of how civilization operates and how to do it securely. Or insecurely, or just kind of the reality of this is where we are right now and this is what you got to do about it.
And that would actually be my catalyst to get, that got me into Cisco Talos because they're like, we don't have anyone with your level of background and expertise and in security. We want you to build this awesome reverse engineering team.
We want you to come over and help us build this team. And then within three months of my accepting that position, I was knee deep in building a team up to assemble a kegerator so, funny how it all kind of works out, you know.
Bryson: Besides you being a generally awesome human being and one of the paragons in the industrial control system space, like I said, where we, we had worked in parallel for almost a decade. Don't worry, the flattery will end shortly. You'll, you'll be, you'll be back to what you're used to. I'll be throwing things at your head.
You have made a world impact, and that was the catalyst for what I wanted to bring you on this episode. Let's talk about how you have changed literally things on the ground in Ukraine.
Joe: I remember when I, when I first started at Talos, this was during, remember the BlackEnergy3 attacks, right? And the watershed moment that was when the Russians were screwing with Ukrainian power grid. I remember I'll never forget where I was. I was flying home for Christmas. My family lives in Alabama and I'm living in Maryland.
So I'm in the Charlottesville, North Carolina airport in a rocking chair killing time and I'm chatting with our good friend, Chris Sistrunk. And Chris is like, Hey man, are you seeing what's going on in Ukraine? And I'm like, yeah, that's wild. What is going on over there? We had been postulating an event like this for a while and we were like, this is crazy, man.
I'm like, we have got to get to Ukraine. I've got to know what's going on. Well, obviously I wasn't able to go over there for the initial DFIR or anything like that. But about a year later, through the contacts inside of Cisco, because it's a very large organization.
Then we have sales and account teams globally, anywhere. If I want to talk to somebody in Kuala Lumpur, I'll call the account team and be like, Hey, there's a customer you have, I'd love to be able to talk with them a little bit. And they're like, sure, we'll facilitate something. Which is a very powerful asset to have. And about a year later, I was in Ukraine for the first time.
It was my first international trip anywhere. I'm from a small town in Alabama. We don't get out to Eastern Europe much. And that would begin this journey of me learning about both Ukrainian power grid, and meeting people and understanding their struggles and their plights, making friends over there.
Some of the people I'd meet over there, we'd eventually hire and they'd come work in Talos. And I would then, about a year and a half later, go back again to present at a conference and also just to facilitate relationships, and share some cyber security knowledge that I've obtained and learn a lot from them as welland just listen.
When the war escalated in the winter of 2022, we were all hands on deck to support that. And that's Talos, yes, where I work in Cisco, but also larger Cisco as well. We immediately formed TUSU inside of Talos called Task Unit Slava Ukraini. It's about 60 to 80 dedicated threat hunters, and every day we comb through Ukrainian telemetry looking for ways to help well over 30 public and private places for free.
We don't charge, we couldn't even if we wanted to. And we're, you know, whatever telemetry they're willing to share with us, either through our kit or someone else's. We look at traffic, we see what's going on. We see a lot of nation-state stuff going down. We notify them, and we're just there to assist them in whatever way we can assist them in the war.
Something that we don't advertise, or I don't advertise terribly often is, you know, there's about 500 of us in Talos, about 80 are Ukrainian. Either they're Ukrainians living in Ukraine, or they're Ukrainians living abroad, some are in the United States, and these are my friends. And it’s their friends and their families who are being threatened by this homicidal maniac and his army. And at Talos, we love who we work with, and we want to protect them.
We want to see them safe, happy, and living fulfilling lives. And we're going to do whatever the hell we can, whenever the hell we can, to help people like the Ukrainians because they deserve a peaceful, good life. And we have not lost a single ounce of steam. We have our standup meetings. We have our designated threat hunting teams.
We've learned so much over there, and we've helped so much as well. So yeah, no, that's a good call out. Like the work that I think we're going to talk about, it's just a natural extension of our presence and our time and our investment with our friends over there in Ukraine.
Bryson: So that all leads up to a strong kind of personal relationship at an organizational level with so many Ukrainians as a part of the team, your initial meetings over there. In fact, I want to pause on that one. Cause you have some funny stories actually from your experiences. So let's, let's add a little color to some of that with you sharing some of those.
And then we're going to pivot to what you've done with the war.
Joe: Oh gosh, uh, I have a lot of stories. Many are very uncouth, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable telling them in a podcast. The one that I like the most, the one that I use the most, that I cite the most I think is, I got into an argument with an information security guy over in Kyiv about what two factor authentication is and wasn't.
And it's very funny when you argue through a translator, because I had never spoken through a translator before, and I didn't really know what the cadence and the nuance, the protocol was. So we're sitting in this transmission substation, we're all very tired, maybe a little hungover. And I said, Hey, tell me a story like, how does an engineer or a process control engineer or power engineer get into your OT network at three in the morning because something at a substation is misbehaving, and you just want to do some preventative maintenance, or your dispatchers have to remotely log into something, whatever, right?
And they go, well, it's cool. We have a VPN. They log into the VPN. I'm like, all right. And then they get to a switch in our IT network that only looks for specific IPs and then lets them go into the OT network and do their work. And I'm like, so not a bastion host, not a two factor authentication. And the guy goes, yeah, we've got two factor authentication.
We have a username, and then they have an IP address. And I went, that's not multi factor authentication. And he goes, yes, it is. And I'm like, no, it's not. And I'm doing this through a very beleaguered translator. And I'm increasingly getting louder. And he is increasingly getting louder. And I'm starting to speak fast because I'm angry.
And under the table he steps on my foot and looks at me and goes, Dude, shut up. I have to memorize what you're saying, and then half the Alabama dribble that comes out of your mouth does not directly translate into Russian. So I have to figure out the right words to say to him and then memorize what he's saying and do the reverse to you.
And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. But like, that's a good example of like, just as one event where I was like–and then at that point, I basically, I learned a phrase that I've used often, which is security vocabulary, which is that not everyone always knows what something means. And that's not necessarily the fault of anybody.
It's just, it's an educational moment. And I still don't know if that guy knows what two factor authentication is, by the way, I never talked to him again. I hope he does. But like, I don't know if I'm setting up as comically as I can, but that's just one small story of just one of the weird inner, but hilarious interactions that I had. You know, I've had guys bring–we had a guy bring an AK-47 to an infosec conference I went to, my second time. And I thought it was a real gun and it turns out it was an airsoft rifle, and nobody told me it was an airsoft rifle because it looked like metal and like Russian spruce. So this was a gun, this was a gun gun and I was freaking out, because people were posing with it. And I walk over to one of the conference organizers and I went, man, that guy's got a gun.
Why has he got a gun in a crowded Hilton hotel lobby, just waving it around and people are laughing? And just the Ukrainian spirit, the pragmatic, no nonsense way they are. The gentleman who's a dear friend of mine, Vladimir, looks at me and goes, look, man, this is Ukraine, you can do whatever you want. And I look around, and there's no charging handle on the side of the rifle. It was an airsoft gun. And I was just like, if you did this in America, man, you'd get shot. Like the police would be there in five seconds and it would be over. He's like, ah, this is Ukraine. We just do what we want here. And I was like, man, this place is wild. And it's just like, just weird interactions like that that have stayed with me my entire career.
Ukrainians go hard. They are a great, great people. And very, very soberly funny as well. So that's just like some weird examples of some things I saw. I have pictures of me with that airsoft rifle, by the way, I will share them with you later.
Bryson: I dare say, that's how I would describe you as soberly funny, but with a twinge of Alabama.
Joe: I'll take it. We'll put them in right on my LinkedIn profile right now.
Bryson: Skill: one vote.
Joe: Endorsed by Bryson.
Bryson: Now, the denouement, the big, the big reason to come on, the reveal, what have you done to help the Ukrainians in the last two years? And it's funny because I remember when you reached out to me with this question and I was like, huh, that's an interesting question. And I didn't even realize the scope of what you were trying to accomplish. And then, hell man, you did it.
Joe: Yeah, the whole, the whole thing started off so bizarrely. So there's this organization in Ukraine called Ukranergo and you know, in America, there's not really a direct analog for your RTL or ISO is because you've got like PJM or you've got MISO, or you've got these organizations that are responsible for huge tracks of North American continent for dispatching and transmission reliability.
In Ukraine, it's just one organization and they're state owned. And Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe. They are huge. 40 million people live there, or thereabouts. And they were one of our partners that we've been helping, especially since the war had escalated and their account manager, again, that Cisco network reached out to me and goes, hey, man, we're going to be in San Jose.
They're going to distribute tech. They're going to swing by the Cisco offices and chill for a day, acn we get a threat briefing from Talos? Which is part of one of my aspects of my job. And I went, for Ukranergo? Heck yeah, dude, I will hop on a plane and be there as quick as I can. And I did. And the account manager, a guy named Dimitri or Dima, Dima goes, hey, man, we're going to get dinner tonight, they just got in, you know, why don't you come by? And I went, yeah, free food on uncle Chuck's dime? Yeah, let's do it. So Chuck is our CEO and I'm still grateful, thank you for the food. And I show up at this steakhouse, and there's like 10 of these guys and gals. And I'm like, wow, this is more than I thought it was going to be.
And I just sat down and I sat next to the Chief Information Officer of Ukranergo. One of the, I didn't know until later, one of the members of the board of directors for a board of management, is what they call it, for Ukranergo. Dispatching operators, IT, supply chain, everything. And I said, Hey, I'm Joe, I'm going to be giving your security presentation tomorrow.
What's going on? And these are the first Ukrainians I've talked to in person since the war has escalated. So all I know is what I see on the news, and what I see in their threat telemetry when I'm doing threat hunting. That's it. You know, it's a very sterile and dispassionate way to look at things. And I said, just what's going on?
And man, they took me to school. They were telling me stories of drones that have buzzed their houses, and substations getting blown up, and all kinds of wild stuff. And I just basically talked and then listened so much, I barely touched my food. Like, it was cold. It was stone cold by the time I realized dinner was over and I'd barely eaten half of it.
I was like, I was so enraptured by the stories of hardship, and innovation, and things they were doing to be able to just keep the lights on. And they mentioned something really offhand, like it was just like item one of 50 that they brought up to me and it's actually the least sexy of all the things they were mentioning, had nothing to do with guns or missiles or whatever.
And they were like, yeah, we can't even get accurate timing to work on our transmission grid because of jamming that is interrupting GPS communications. And this little thing in the back of my head went off and it goes, hey, that's really important for synchro phaser management and for, you know, being able to monitor the health of the grid.
My time in the utility, had taught me that. But I haven't thought about it in eight years. And I was like, oh yeah, that's, that's kind of important. And I kind of, I said to him, I said, hey, why don't you guys just go buy atomic clocks, you know, that way you don't have to worry about GPS timing. And the guy looked across me from the table.
He's like, cool, are you going to cut me a check? Those are 30 to 40,000 a piece. And I need well over 40 of them. And I'm like, man, unless you're asking for pesos, I can't help you and even then, I don't know if I could afford that. So it was a really interesting problem because I was like, how do you do grid synchronization and timing when you don't have a disciplined clock that everybody steps to, or at least can measure and timestamp to?
And I was like, man, I don't really know. But then I made a very naive assumption. I went, dude, I work for the largest hardware manufacturer in the world. I am stone cold, handsome and brilliant, I got this. I'll figure something out. So after the dinner was over, I just kind of cataloged all of these things in my head, had a great presentation the following day, hopped on a plane, flew back.
And then S4 happened, right? And you mentioned that, right? I was over there bugging you. I talked to you and Mike Tucker and everybody. And I went, man, I got some weird stuff going down. I remember I was very excited about it. I was like, this is wild stuff. And I mentioned the timing issue and nobody really had a good answer to it, right? Because who's doing electronic warfare against the Americans in our grid over here in North America? None that I'm aware of. It turns out there are quite a few outages, but not like in a directed military conflict. And that was the push, that was the thing. And, you know, a week later I was sitting in my office and I went, I wonder if we have something inside of Cisco that can actually help with this.
And my little neurodivergent brain just wouldn't let go of it. And it was just this weird one off thing. And I went, nah, we got to have something. The answer is we did not. And we would have to go make that thing, but the journey to get there was emotional highs and lots of lows, but we got it.
Bryson: Single handedly with help, I mean, managed to solve a country level problem during wartime. And again, when we talk about large companies, large systems and how hard, I mean, we're not even talking about the electric grid here. We're talking about just getting a large company to go a direction and do something. And you did that too.
Joe: Yeah, that was something I just could never have anticipated. I was very fortunate to have senior leadership buy-in from both my director and my vice president, guy named Matt Watchinski, who was a saint. And from there I was able to leverage their leadership, their executive leadership team network, to find the right people.
This is where I think just on pure force of personality, I showed up and I said, look, here's the problem: Ukrainians cannot keep grid synchronization for a variety of reasons. They're being shot at. Things are being blown up. All very bad, but I can't stop the missiles. But I think we can help here with this one thing, which is this timing desynchronization issue with them losing GPS.
And my first thought was, yo, let's go buy some atomic clocks, find some Cisco chassis, bubble gum them together. Jobs are good. Turns out that's not how the world works, especially in my company. But by using that network, I would be directed eventually to various SMEs. And I would find a guy named Reed McGady in our Internet of Things business unit, who has got to be one of the brightest engineers in his team and his director that I've ever met.
It just goes to show like you just meet so many smart people all over the place who have subject matter expertise in things you would never even imagine, and they could be sitting down the road from you, and you have no idea. And it was sort of just dumb luck. But to get their buy-in, I basically had to go use the secret sauce, and the secret sauce, other than force of personality and/or blackmail, was engaging something called the critical accounts team inside of Cisco. So we have a team inside of Cisco that answers only to our CEO and the executive, the senior executive leadership team, and they are often referred to as CAP, Critical Action Programs. And basically their job is to do whatever it takes to make things right. Whether a customer has an issue or a country gets invaded, it is their job to utilize the full resources of Cisco to set the ship right, and then move on to the next crisis.
They are some of the most awesome people I've met in the company, out of a lot of awesome people that I've met. Because once I had their buy in, then I had basically the backing of considerable power inside of Cisco to go look, this is what I'm trying to achieve. And they're like, we love this. There's an open CAP case, is what we call it here in Cisco, for Ukraine to assist them through the war. This aligns. We think we have absolutely some resources we can help. Just let us know what we can do. And when you have that kind of institutional muscle, you can make change happen. And huge shout out to them.
They actually gave me a challenge coin and I, we kind of traded challenge coins for their help with Ukraine. We have a special one in Cisco. And they gave me a really nice one as well. And I think they knew, or they realized that we were going to be saving some lives.
And they're like, well, I'm like, look, this was the goal. We need to go save lives, we need to keep their grid stable. And they were in, they were on board. They realized the difference that this would make. And that was everybody I talked to in my company. They went, you know what? This can make a difference if we can get this off the ground, let's get it off the ground. And I think that speaks a lot to human nature, to people trying to be inherently good and wanting to help others. And couldn't be more proud to know those people. All of them, the entire team I put together.
Bryson: Anything else you want to cover before we go into our final two questions?
Joe: Final two questions, sir, I am ready. I'm prepared. I've girded myself.
Bryson: If you could wave a magic, non-internet-connected wand, what is one thing you would change?
Joe: I would change, this war never happened. It's cool that we were able to help and do some really good work, but it's heartbreaking. I talked to the Ukrainians almost every other day, and it tears me up inside. I had a, I had a meeting and somebody worked from home that day and they were in Ukraine and I said, hey, I've never seen the inside of your house before. And you guys working from home today? He goes, oh yeah, it's Ukrainian independence day, we think we're going to get bombed so we have to work from home because it's too dangerous to go into the office. And that destroyed me. And I'll never forget that. I cry if my latte is not hot enough from Starbucks, and no one tried to shoot me or bomb me while I was going to get coffee.
So if I had my druthers, I would make this war go away. In just a blink of an eye and erase this podcast, and these coins that we had to make, and everything. None of it is worth it, but I'm glad we were able to make a difference, but that's where my heart will always be, which is war sucks.
Bryson: Okay, you waved your magic wand, now looking into the crystal ball, for a five year prediction. One good thing and one bad thing that you think is going to happen in this industry.
Joe: I'll keep it around GPS, because this is kind of what we did when we helped with the GPS Resiliency for time sync in Ukraine for their grid. One bad thing is I don't think anyone is gonna get off of GPS resiliency to help maintain grid synchronization inside of the world, because
it's cheap and it's easy and it's accessible, which is why Ukrainians had so many issues. The good news, the good thing, I think, is I've been very, very fortunate to talk to MRO and FERC and some other places about the work that we've done, and I think they all realize that GPS is fragile and unsustainable,and that we need to find a more resilient method to be able to actually access precision navigation in time. They cannot be so easily screwed with because a country that wants to go to war with you decides you don't get access to your electromagnetic spectrum anymore. This work has drawn attention to that fragility, which I think we always knew existed, to be honest with you.
But now it is really generating, I think, super positive conversation. And I think within the next five years, we're going to see some, I think, some really cool, Industry solutions and more positive talk around, man, how do we get away from this 1960s level technology, to something that isn't going to hose us when a solar flare happens, or country X decides country Y doesn't get GPS for a day or something.
So it's, it's weird to say it, but there is some positivity coming out of the work that we were able to do. So fingers crossed five years positive. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling the vibe.