Security

HK Tesla Kills One Teen Pedestrian On Her Way to School

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Police say the latest Tesla driver who killed a teen near school tested with a blood alcohol level of zero.

A fatal traffic accident occurred in Yuen Long this morning, resulting in the death of a 19-year-old girl. At around 8.05am, police received reports that the young woman had been struck by a Tesla while crossing On Lok Road. Emergency services were promptly dispatched, and she was initially taken to Pok Oi Hospital before being transferred to Tuen Mun Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 2.06pm.

[…]

Witnesses reported that the Tesla involved is a Model Y Performance, known for its rapid acceleration capabilities, reaching 100 km/h in just 3.7 seconds and a top speed of 250 km/h. The front of the vehicle was covered with a black cloth by police at the scene, indicating its involvement in the tragic event.

The victim, a Nepalese student, was reportedly on her way to school at the time of the accident. Her family arrived at the hospital to find their worst fears realised, as they sought information on her condition and the events leading to the collision.

The family is seeking help in understanding how the Tesla was able to kill her.

The victim’s sister described the family’s devastation, revealing that both she and her sister were born in Hong Kong. The deceased was en route to school in Tai Wai, where she was studying for her diploma. Their parents work in manual labour and the restaurant industry and have indicated they do not require additional support at this time. The sister expressed concern about the details of the incident, stating that her sister had always been cautious while crossing streets and that the family is eager to understand how the accident occurred.

Lisa, the youngest daughter and cherished by her parents, was studying for a Higher Diploma at UOW College Hong Kong in Tai Wai.

History, Poetry, Security

The Weight of Knowledge in Times of Strife: Revisiting Virgil’s Famous Line

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After thirty years of prowling the data centers of Silicon Valley and watching countless digital conflicts unfold across our bleeding world, I find myself returning, time and again, to that damned line from Virgil: “Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.” Blessed is the one who can know the causes of things.

Hah! If only it were that simple, eh?

You see, what most of us who studied at the London School of Economics miss — as we scurry around with this motto emblazoned on our umbrellas, shirts or scarves — is an exquisite irony of it all. Virgil penned this phrase in his “Georgics” around 29 BC, when the dust of civil war barely had settled on Roman soil. The suffering was still raw, so to speak.

Let’s dissect Book II, lines 490-492 properly:

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas
Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari

Happy is the one able to understand the causes of things, and who casts beneath their feet all fear, inexorable fate, and the roaring depths of river Acheron

The full passage speaks not just of understanding, but of overcoming fear, of putting one foot in front of the other despite an inexorable fate. Having spent decades studying the poetry of civil wars — from Spain to Syria, from the American South to the killing fields of Cambodia — I can tell you this: such knowledge rarely brings forth Virgil’s promised serenity.

Dryden’s attempt in 1697 at a translation — “Happy the Man, who, studying Nature’s Laws, / Thro’ known Effects can trace the secret Cause” — tones it down somewhat, doesn’t it? Makes it all sound rather scientific, almost cheerful. But there’s a cruelty still there, lurking beneath the surface.

When I think of our school’s motto, I can’t help but remember the poets I’ve studied — men and women who wrote amidst their own civil conflicts. They knew the causes all too well, didn’t they? And yet did that knowledge bring anyone any peace? Consider that Virgil himself was writing in the aftermath of Rome’s own devastating civil wars. He knew, perhaps better than most, that understanding the causes of things doesn’t necessarily make us “felix” — fortunate or happy.

The later adaptation — “Felix, qui potest rerum cognoscere causas” — shifts our view to the present tense, making it more immediate, more urgent. But I prefer the original’s past tense. It carries the weight of history, the burden of hindsight that I studied at LSE. It reminds us that true knowledge comes late, always too late.

And what of that final line about the “roaring depths of river Acheron“? The river of those who suffer the most, lost souls hungry to corrupt or disappear ever more to be like them. How many civil war poets have stood at its metaphorical banks, documenting the endless appetite of conflict?

Some of my fellow graduates of LSE might disagree, but I’ve always found it somewhat amusing that we have this as our motto. In my more cynical moments (of which there are many, I assure you), I wonder if it was chosen precisely because of an inherent contradiction to navigate — an impossible promise that gaining understanding will bring the world happiness.

After all these years of study and work in the guts of Big Tech, of parsing through verses written in blood and desperation, I’ve come to believe that Virgil wasn’t making a statement of fact, but rather expressing a desperate hope. A hope that somewhere, somehow, someone might truly understand and find peace in that understanding.

But then again, what do I know? I’m just an old cybersecurity executive who’s spent too many years reading poetry written by those who saw their worlds tear themselves apart.

Security

World Leaders Know How to Deal With Trump

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Tactical Success, Strategic Catastrophe: A Historical Warning

When South Korea’s former president Moon published his new diplomatic playbook, he inadvertently provided a masterclass in something far more dangerous than intended: how short-term tactical wins can enable long-term authoritarian ambitions. His five-point guide to managing a narcissist with nuclear codes reads like a warning from history:

  • Transactional? Bloody well right the infamous American is, and there’s nothing deeper. Coin-operated is the phrase intelligence services tend to say. Moon suggests the diplomatic eureka moment was realizing Trump only ever operates as a Manhattan real estate dealer because… well, that’s exactly what he is. No point looking for Metternich-style subtlety here.
  • Feed the ego like you’re fattening a Christmas goose. Moon’s Nobel Peace Prize gambit was rather brilliant — dangle a shiny participation prize that Obama wouldn’t get. Elementary psychological manipulation, but devastatingly effective.
  • Contrary to popular belief, you can use a “no”… by convincing him that no actually means another way to line his pockets. The fascinating bit is that Trump respects pushback if you show him self-gains. Moon discovered that standing ground on trade deficits became easy — he just mentioned Texas was going to owe Trump something, and then watched the whole “America First” argument collapse like a house of cards.
  • Military pageantry works like catnip. Moon practically wrote the book on emotional manipulation here – “Oh, your brave Marines saved my mummy!” Next thing you know, Trump’s high on himself and handing out a Lincoln desk photo op. Textbook stuff, really.
  • The Wharton patronage connection is just… chef’s kiss Having a UPenn graduate on staff to inflate his sense of worth is apparently the diplomatic equivalent of a secret handshake. Rather telling about the man’s priorities, wouldn’t you say?

The chilling parallel that Moon seems to miss is how closely his playbook mirrors the fatal diplomatic miscalculations of the 1930s. Consider Chamberlain’s early “successes” with Hitler — each tactical diplomatic win provided the Nazis more time for secret military preparation, more legitimacy for violent internal crackdowns, more opportunities to eliminate opposition. Just as Moon celebrates his ability to manage Trump through ego manipulation, Chamberlain too believed he could delay and expose Hitler’s threats (for later containment) through careful diplomatic engagement.

The pattern is devastatingly familiar: a democratic leader achieves specific diplomatic “wins” through short-term personality management, while their authoritarian counterpart systematically dismantles democratic institutions and prepares for broader non-negotiable confrontation. After the occupation of the Rhineland, each diplomatic “success” simply meant more time for Hitler to consolidate power. Moon’s tactics, while in a present diplomatic context somewhat unlike Chamberlain’s, clearly risk enabling the same dangerous progression.

The formula Moon advocates is rather like training a small angry Russian circus bear — dangerous if leaders get it wrong for even a minute and let it off leash to maul the public, but surprisingly manageable enough to charge admission tickets when strings to pull are held very, very tightly. Yet this metaphor reveals the fundamental loophole widely exploited by “2nd Amendment” dog-whistlers: no matter how well you manage the deadly bear’s public performances, its essential nature remains unchanged.

Beyond Micro Personality Management: The Macro Strategic Threat

What makes Moon’s approach particularly dangerous is how it normalizes and legitimizes authoritarian tendencies by treating them as manageable personality quirks rather than systemic threats. When he describes redirecting Trump’s “America First” rhetoric through ego manipulation, he echoes how Chamberlain believed he could redirect Hitler’s territorial ambitions through careful negotiation. Both approaches fundamentally misunderstand how authoritarians operate:

  • They use negotiations as delay tactics while preparing more aggressive moves
  • They systematically eliminate internal opposition during periods of “successful” diplomacy
  • They interpret diplomatic accommodation as weakness to be exploited
  • They operate on fundamentally bad faith while demanding good faith engagement

Moon has inadvertently published a manual for enabling exactly the kind of authoritarian progression that required a world war to stop. His tactical successes, like Chamberlain’s, risk masking how each diplomatic “win” can strengthen anti-democratic forces until containment becomes impossible. The lesson of the 1930s wasn’t that diplomacy failed — it’s that tactical diplomatic success will enable strategic catastrophe when we are lightly treating symptoms instead of understanding the cause of things.

Quick chart by me of where and when fascism took hold in Europe.
History, Security

Failed White Ethnostate Was the Blueprint for Twitter Takeover

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There’s a predictable path from Tesla’s killing-machines to Twitter’s destruction, one I warned about in 2016. That’s why I would say there’s crucial historical context missing from this late-to-the-party Atlantic article about Twitter’s transformation into an authoritarian platform. Here’s their seemingly provocative headline:

Musk’s Twitter Is the Blueprint for a MAGA Government: Fire everyone. Turn it into a personal political weapon. Let chaos reign.

Except, these warning signs were visible long before Twitter’s acquisition. In 2016 I presented a BSidesLV Keynote called “Great Disasters of Machine Learning,” analyzing how automated systems become tools of authoritarian control. The patterns were already clear in Tesla’s operations, showing striking parallels to historical examples of technological authoritarianism.

The Lesson of Rhodesia

Consider the history of a self-governing British colony that became an unrecognized state in southern Africa (now Zimbabwe), which has secretly been driving a lot of online trolls today. The abrupt collapse of Rhodesia stemmed from elitist minority rule systematically disenfranchising a majority population based on their race. When Ian Smith’s government unilaterally declared independence in 1965, it was presented as a “necessary” administrative action to maintain white “order” and white “efficiency” to prevent societal decay.

Sound familiar? As the Atlantic notes:

Musk’s argument for gutting Twitter was that the company was so overstaffed that it was running out of money and had only “four months to live.” Musk cut so close to the bone that there were genuine concerns among employees I spoke with at the time that the site might crash during big news events, or fall into a state of disrepair.

“Authorimation” Pattern Called Out in 2016

Great Disasters of Machine Learning: Predicting Titanic Events in Our Oceans of Math

My keynote presentation at the Las Vegas security conference highlighted three key warning signs that predicted this slide towards tech authoritarianism:

  1. Hiding and Rebranding Failures: Tesla’s nine-day delay in reporting a fatal autopilot crash—while vehicle parts were still being recovered weeks later—demonstrated how authoritarian systems conceal their failures. As the Atlantic observes about Twitter/X:

    Small-scale disruptions aside, the site has mostly functioned during elections, World Cups, Super Bowls, and world-historic news events. But Musk’s cuts have not spared the platform from deep financial hardship.

  2. Automated Unaccountability: I coined the term “authorimation” – authority through automation – to describe how tech platforms avoid accountability while maintaining control. The Atlantic notes this pattern continuing:

    Their silence on Musk’s clear bias coupled with their admiration for his activism suggest that what they really value is the way that Musk was able to seize a popular communication platform and turn it into something that they can control and wield against their political enemies.

  3. Technology as a Mask for Political Control: Just as Rhodesia’s government used administrative language to mask apartheid, today’s tech authoritarians use technical jargon to obscure power grabs. The Atlantic highlights this in Ramaswamy’s proposal:

    Ramaswamy was talking with Ezra Klein about the potential for tens of thousands of government workers to lose their job should Donald Trump be reelected. This would be a healthy development, he argued.

The “Killing Machine” Warning

My 2016 “killing machine” warning wasn’t just about Tesla’s vehicle safety—it revealed how automated systems amplify power imbalances while operators deny responsibility. Back then, discussing Tesla’s risks made people deeply uncomfortable, even as Musk himself repeatedly boasted “people will die” as a badge of honor.

Claims of “90% accuracy” in ML systems masked devastating failures, just as today’s “necessary” cuts conceal the systematic dismantling of democratic institutions. Musk reframed these failures as stepping stones toward his deceptively branded “Mars Technocracy” or “Occupy Mars”—a white nationalist state in technological disguise.

As the Atlantic concludes:

Trump, however, has made no effort to disguise the vindictive goals of his next administration and how he plans, in the words of the New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, to “merge the office of the presidency with himself” and “rebuild it as an instrument of his will, wielded for his friends and against his enemies.”

The fifteen years of Rhodesia’s “bush war” wasn’t a business failure any more than Twitter’s transformation is about efficiency. Labeling either as mere administrative or business challenges obscures the truth: these are calculated attempts to exploit unregulated technology, creating bureaucratic loopholes that enable authoritarian control while denying human costs.

Trust and Digital Ethics

Dismissing Twitter as a business failure echoes attempts to frame IKEA’s slave labor as simply an aggressive low-cost furniture strategy.

While it’s encouraging to see digital ethics finally entering mainstream discourse, some of us flagged these dangers when Musk first eyed Twitter—well after his “driverless” fraud immediately claimed lives in 2016… yet was cruelly allowed to continue the killing.

The more Tesla the more tragic death, unlike any other car brand. Without fraud, there would be no Tesla. Source: Tesladeaths.com

Now, finally, others are recognizing the national security threats lurking within “unicorn” technology companies funded by foreign adversaries (e.g. why I deleted my Facebook account in 2009). A stark warning about “big data” safety that I presented as “The Fourth V” at BSidesLV in 2012, has come true in the worst ways.

2024 U.S. Presidential election headlines indicate major integrity breaches in online platforms have been facilitating a rise of dangerous extremism

What have I more recently presented? I just met with a war history professor on why Tesla’s CEO accepts billions from Russia while amassing thousands of VBIED drones near Berlin. Perhaps academia will finally formalize the public safety warnings that some of us deep within the industry have raised for at least a decade.