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very boring towards the end. Yeah, the best is the beginning. This is the Hacker Noon Podcast.

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I'm David Smook, and today we have an internet legend with us, presidential candidate,

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software innovator, all that jazz, John McAfee. Thanks for joining us.

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Well, thanks, David. And I'm no longer a presidential candidate. Two weeks ago,

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I lost the libertarian primaries, which I fully expected. Well, once you have done it, you always

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are it. So, what's your current job then? God, I wish I knew, Dave. I really do. I mean,

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you'll have to ask Janice, who is my boss. I have no fucking clue what my job is. I do,

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basically, what I'm told. So, you just wake up every day and Janice tells you what's up?

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Janice tells me what's the fuck up. Yes, that's right. Listen, Dave, if Lynn does not tell you

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the same, you simply have not been married long enough. What can I tell you?

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Oh, no. She runs this house, for sure. I just show up. Here I am, you know.

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Me too. I just show up. I'm here. Literally, Janice is my scheduler. What? What? She's about to hit me or

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something. You had tissue stuck to your finger. What? You had tissue on your finger. It's okay.

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She said I had tissue on my finger. That's how detailed this woman controls my fucking life.

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She's going, she's going, yeah. I had tissue on my finger. My apologies, those of you who saw

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tissue on my fingers. All right. Hey, so you grew up in Virginia in the 50s. Is that right?

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Yes. Yes, I did, actually. Virginia. Norton, the Appalachia, the poorest part of America.

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And if you were to look back at, like, if you were to describe the Black Lives Movement

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today to, like, yourself as a teenager, how do you think you'd react?

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Well, that's a very heavy question, Dave. There wasn't a Black Lives Movement, of course,

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in the 1950s, and the 1950s. And I regret that I grew up in an age where Blacks, and my wife,

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by the way, is as, well, she looks extraordinarily Black, and she claims to be Black.

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But I grew up in an age where Blacks had no rights. I'm sorry to say that, but it is

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absolutely true. I'm sorry, the 1950s. And white people did not have any concept that

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they were either privileged or superior or whatever whites may have thought in the 1950s. So I'm really

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the wrong person to ask, other than that I have lived with multiple Black women, and then I've

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married one, and I've been married for almost, what, nine years? By the way, all of you gentlemen

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out there, you think you want to get married? Well, if you marry a Black woman... Watch it.

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Watch it. Hang on, I'm telling the truth, baby. If you want to marry a Black woman, you had better

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fucking have balls the size of goddamn watermelons, because otherwise you will end up being the true

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slave. I'm just saying. Well, you know, where we come from shapes the way we see the world.

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You know, so I wanted to just touch a little bit on that, but...

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Does it really, Dave, does where we come from shape the way we see the world, or does our totality of

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experiences? Yeah. Up to this present moment. The setting is always part of the experience. So the

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setting, you know, in any story, in anything like that, the setting, it doesn't make you who you are,

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but it will force a reaction, and it's just, you can't write a story without a setting, you know,

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then you don't have a story. Janice, this motherfucker is too goddamn smart for me to be

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talking to here. Do not sketch on me if this motherfucker can. I'm sorry. Yes, well, you're

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absolutely correct. The setting, the setting does in fact, it does not control or predict

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the outcome of the experience. But fuck me, yes, it does in fact influence it. But there's more.

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There's more than setting. I mean, let me tell you about goddamn setting. For the past year,

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Janice and I, well, first of all, we escaped the United States on the 17th of January

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last year, because I found out on the 22nd of January, the IRS is going to convene a grand jury

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to charge both of us with tax fraud. Now, I have, what were you drinking beer?

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No, it's actually a kombucha. It's what? Kombucha. Yeah, so you say. I know people put beer or vodka

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in kombucha bottles, but yeah, I'll accept that. Anyway, so we found out about it. We left on our

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yacht on the 17th of January for the Bahamas. Now, I knew the United States would come after us, which

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they fucking did. In March, no, in April, we escaped from the Bahamas just a few hours before the IRS

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and the guys of the CIA were to collect us. We went to Cuba. We were there for two months,

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and the Cuban government pulled both Janice in. Janice is right here with me now. Pulled us both in

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and said, listen, the United States has demanded that we return you to America.

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And it was a Cuban general. We were at an army base. The Cuban general said, however,

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we were disinclined to do so. So we're giving you 72 hours to leave the country and never return,

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because we're a fucking embarrassment now and a problem. So we did. We left and they came twice a

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day and said, Mr. McAfee, will you be gone in 46 hours? If I have to fucking swim to Haiti,

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trust me, I will be gone. So we were, we left with 16 hours to spare, actually, with a big ass,

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goddamn boat, a staff of eight, four fucking big dogs, and Janice and I, and a captain.

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It was no small task. We spent four and a half days at sea, pulled into the Dominican Republic and

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were arrested before we could leave the boat. And what did they say? I'm sorry, Mr. McAfee, but you must

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return to the United States. And I've been arrested 21 times in 11 different countries. So this is not,

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nothing new for me. So I managed to, to acquire two Dominican Republic lawyers,

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who managed after four days of Janice and I being in jail to get us freedom to leave to England,

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which we did. Did you, did you get to stay in the same cell?

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Fuck no, please God. I'm sorry, but husband and wife, listen, I've been arrested 21 times. I never

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experienced a situation where husband and wife get, no, no, we did not get the same, same cell. And

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in fact, Janice was, um, well, put out, uh, to say the least. In any case, so after four days, we,

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we, we win the right to go to England, which is what I asked for in the very fucking beginning. I

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want to go to England. I've got a British passport. I'm a British citizen. Send me home. Anyway, so that's

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what we did on the way I said, I talked to Janice very soon. I said, baby, we cannot fucking run

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forever. We have to go underground, which we did. So we got to London. We've been underground since

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July, what 19th of 2019, almost a whole fucking year. Wow. I don't know why. Did you ask a question

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about that? Probably not. I'm an old, I'm 74. Okay. Listen, old men have the, the right, if not the

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obligation to ramble. Are you still, um, doing math and writing code? Oh, fuck me. I haven't written code

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in 50 fucking years, dude. I mean, no, of course not. Although, listen, I, I am still the best, uh,

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coder on this fucking planet. I'm just saying. So we're at a really early age. Were you really

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good at math? Oh, fuck yeah. That's the only thing I watch good at. Listen, when I went to, went to

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college at the age of 18, we're going to college, St. Louis, Virginia. I wanted to major in physics.

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And then after one fucking semester, I figured out, you know what? I have to learn more math

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to get a fucking physics degree than I have to learn to get a math degree. So I go,

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well, fuck that shit. So I switched to math. I, of course, graduated with almost, I don't know why.

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But even, even before college, when did you realize you were really good at math?

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I don't know, third grade. I never had to study math. It's one of the things, I'm, I'm a lazy

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motherfucker. I am. And math always came easy to me. And, and therefore that's, that's what I did.

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And if those people do not understand digital science, digital computers and software, it's

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it's fucking mathematics. That's all it is, people. It just happens to be a mathematics

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based on a binary system than a decimal system. It's all the same fucking thing.

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And, and binary systems are fucking fantastic because you have mathematics you can't do on a

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digital system like Boolean algebra and or exclusive or, fuck me, the most powerful

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processes in all the world of mathematics. So no, I, so digital, digital computing looks like,

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ah, fuck me. Is this easy? But programming is nothing more than mathematics. People only

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in a binary system rather than a decimal system.

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So, uh, after college, uh, you got a job at NASA. How did, how did that come about?

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Well, my first job was not at NASA. My first job after college, really, my first job was at

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General Electric. That's where I first learned programming on the General Electric, uh, GPAC 4020,

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which was the world's first process automation computer. Now what's process automation? Well,

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it's, uh, the most complex application of computer science ever fucking invented.

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Uh, uh, I was assigned to the, uh, the automation of Australia, iron and steel's rolling mill in Port

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Kembla, New South Wales, Australia. What's a rolling mill? Well, it's one of the things that prior to

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computers was a fucking art. Because what's a rolling mill? So steel comes in there, the whole bunch of

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rolling mills. There's the repeat roller where it goes one way, then another way, then there's a system

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of 15 rollers. So what happens? You've got, uh, white hot steel coming right out and it's coming in slabs

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that are maybe, I don't know, 12 inches thick. So it comes between these rollers, which has a pressure that

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you can't possibly fucking imagine. I mean, that would take a, a dime or a half dollar and convert it

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into something smaller than a sheet of paper in terms of width, powerful fucking pressure. So

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comes to these rollers, comes in at maybe three miles per hour, goes to the first roll. It's compressed,

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comes out slightly thinner, comes out slightly faster. I mean, come on, let's face it, people,

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you put the same volume in at a certain volume at a certain speed. And if the volume is less,

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it's got to come up faster. So at the very end of this 15 roller process, the steel, which comes in

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two miles an hour is coming out at 80 miles per hour. Now, so they have this thing called flying

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shears, because otherwise you'd have utter fucking chaos. And by the, by the time it comes out of the

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last one, it's no longer red hot. I'm no longer white hot. It's red hot. It's so fucking hot.

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So it's coming out at 80 miles an hour. And these shears are flying at what speed? 80 fucking miles

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per hour. And they cut these things in sheets that are 12 feet long. Now, up until automation,

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human fucking beings, if you can imagine this, Jesus fucking God, if you want to know what the human is

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capable of. And by the way, it was the most highly paid worker, low level job in the world.

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And these, these... Because of the amount of danger and risk they were taking on?

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Pardon? Because of the amount of danger and risk they're taking on?

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No, no, no, no, no. They think, oh, wow. The risk was, the risk was cutting the shears at the wrong place

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or because these people had to manage the pressure of the rolls constantly to get the right speed,

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the right everything. No, the, the risk was you would destroy or break a set of rolls,

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which was a half a million dollars, which costs you your job. No, no, no. No, there's no personal

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risk. I mean, fuck me. You're up in four stories above the rolling mill. Why? Because the mill itself,

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when the temperature is 200 degrees Fahrenheit. I mean, no, no, nobody survives to that. No.

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Three stories above is no, no personal risk. The risk is your job. You break a roll, they fire your sorry ass.

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So, no. And so did you, at this point, did you always know you wanted to, you know, do your own

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thing? And it was, were you thinking like... Of course, I'd always done my own thing. Ever since I was 12 years old, dude,

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when I was 12, uh, I borrowed my, my father's lawnmower and used to mow every fucking yard.

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And they would, why? Who the fuck used to mow yards? Nobody. Nobody. So I'd knock on doors.

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Uh, Mr. Jones, uh, was like your, your yard mowed for $1.75. Oh, fuck yes. Everybody said yes.

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Well, it cost me 25 cents in gas. So I made a fucking fortune. No, this is in

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1958. I'm 13 years old. No, 1957. 12 years old.

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And when that first time, you know, making money, did you get the thrill and the satisfaction of like,

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Fuck it!

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This is it.

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What greater thrill is there than, than having money in your goddamn pocket and all of your friends

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uh, are working on 50 cents a week allowance? No, trust me, power, instant power. In the wintertime,

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what'd I do? I'd take a snow shovel, knock on the resort. Would you like your sidewalk shovel?

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Who the fuck wants to shovel this sidewalk after a large snowfall? Nobody.

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So seriously, I was the richest dude in the entire fucking town by the time I was 13. When I was 14,

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I owned four paper routes, paper routes. Nobody has it. I don't think they have paper boys anymore.

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Um, but back then it was, it was an entrepreneurial job. You bought the newspapers from the newspaper

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company. If you had a route. If you were 14 today, you know, looking around and seeing what the internet is

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and seeing how that works, would you think you would already, you know, have an online business?

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Yeah, I'd be promoting bank of prostitutes if I was 14 today. Seriously, I'm serious. I mean,

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no, I would, I would make so much fucking money. But that's beside the point. So anyway, I had paper routes

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by the time I was 14. So no, by the time I was 16, I had more money in the bank than my goddamn parents.

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By the time I was 18, after having a bunch of other entrepreneurial jobs, I had close to a hundred

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thousand dollars, which is 1960, 1963, actually. That hundred thousand dollars is three million dollars in

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today's money. I mean, I was the god of Southwest Virginia at 18. And I've been that ever since.

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Why? I don't want, I don't want to work for anybody. Why the fuck? No, I'll definitely work for NASA.

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Why? God damn it. I'll learn some shit. I'll work for Lockheed, which I did. I'll learn some shit.

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So I read that you wrote the first version of the antivirus software in a day and a half.

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Is that true? I did, yes.

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And what did it, what did, what was the initial function? What did it do?

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Okay. So now here's what happened. By the way, if you think that people get success from writing a

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business plan, having an idea, no, people flake the fuck up. Why do people go to Harvard Business School or

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Stanford Business School? I used to teach once a month at Stanford Business School. Why? Because I

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was a successful entrepreneur. I know what the fuck that is. No, you go to Stanford Business School,

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you pay a goddamn fortune so that you get a job with IBM or Microsoft or Samsung or somebody

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for a shitload of money. But you ain't no goddamn entrepreneur. What's an entrepreneur? An entrepreneur

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is someone with no goddamn plan and he's sitting and just minding his own fucking business and an

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opportunity comes by his nose, which happens 10 times a day for every human on this planet.

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And you have the balls to say, okay, if I grab this opportunity, I will risk losing my job, my wife,

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my house, my neighbors, my friends, everything, which I did. And everybody does. Are you willing to do

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that? If not, you're not an entrepreneur and stop making plans because you will never get a goddamn

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time. No money comes to you without risk. And what is the risk? Everything, everything you've ever known,

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everything you've ever loved, everything you've ever wanted and everything that you currently

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fucking have, your house, your car, your kids, your wife. I lost everything, everything starting McAfee.

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Why? Because I thought that was the thing to do. So now how did McAfee happen? Like every

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fucking successful business, including Microsoft, I know Bill Gates. I met Bill Gates shortly after

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Microsoft became the thing. Nobody has a fucking plan, people. Nobody has an idea. Do you know what

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ideas are worth? Jack fucking shit. We all have ideas. 10, 20, 30 a day, everybody on this planet,

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nothing. What's worth something? Opportunity. So what was mine? Well, I'm sitting on a Sunday

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morning watching television. I don't remember what I was watching. My worthless fucking brother-in-law,

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Rich, my wife's brother, who never had a goddamn job, but had been living with us for a fucking year

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as a parasite on my hard work working at Lockheed on a black program. I was making more money than

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God. Do you understand that on this black program? What's a black program? It's a program that does

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not exist. I was working at Lockheed as a defense contractor. Black programs are those super, super,

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fucking, secret things that don't exist. Now, in order to get on one, you've got to have a top secret

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clearance. So my boss came to me after working at Lockheed and said, you've been tapped for a black

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program. It's catching you for your

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clearance next week. Now, what's that mean? You spent an entire fucking day and the NSA asks you

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things like, asks me things like, have you ever fucked a goat? Not that I can remember.

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What about a chicken? Not that I remember. Have you ever cheated on your wife? Yes. How many times?

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Well, fuck me as often as I could. Have you ever taken drugs? Yes. Which drugs? I mean,

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every drug I'm aware of. Have you ever sold drugs? Yes. Which drugs? Every drug I'm aware of.

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Why did you do that? Well, there's a shitload of money in it, assholes. That's what, anyway,

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so the entire day, plus they put electrodes on you. They ask you, I mean, whatever. So now,

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so I go back out there and I tell my boss, I say, listen, my security clearance is not coming.

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One week later, I get a top secret security clearance. Why? Fuck me. I don't know. I guess

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it's because the people go, you know what? The Russians are not going to be able to

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say, we know this about you because the motherfucker doesn't care. I don't know.

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No. For whatever reason, I got it. So anyway, I was making more money than God. Doing what?

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Every Monday morning, they flew me to another state for working for the Air Force. Fuck me. No,

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I can say that. I hope working for the Air Force on a program I can't possibly tell you about. And then

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every Friday afternoon, sending me back to San Jose, where I lived in Santa Clara in Silicon Valley.

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I can't tell you how much I was making more money than God. I mean, I had cars. I had motorcycles,

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cars, every fucking thing. And on a Sunday morning, my brother-in-law, Rich, that motherfucker who's

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never had a job was reading the San Jose Mercury News. And it says, whoa, look at this. There's a

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thing called a computer virus. They just discovered it. I go, what? Give me the fucking paper.

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So I read the paper. It was about this thing called the Pakistani brain computer virus. Why was it called

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that? Because that was what was written inside the code that was taking control of computers throughout

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Europe? They go, fuck me. So I read the article. Monday morning at 7 a.m. I called a friend of

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mine at Stanford because I taught at Stanford University once a month to the graduate school,

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business school. I said, give me a copy. They had a copy. That afternoon, I went to Stanford,

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got a floppy disk. You know what a floppy disk is? Well, fuck you. I don't care. Got a floppy disk.

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I came back with the virus, took it apart. And it was the world's first artificial intelligence,

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people. What is a virus? Well, it's a piece of code that tries to do three things. Hide,

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survive, and propagate, and destroy. Well, also do damage. But many of them didn't do much damage.

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But so I'm going, fuck me. I wanted to hire those motherfuckers and start a company. There were two

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brothers in Lahore, Pakistan, that had a computer repair shop that created this thing. Well, fuck me.

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Anyway, so as I was looking at the code and understanding what it was, I thought, well,

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fuck, this is so easy to fix. So I wrote a little program. It took me less than two days.

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Put it up on my bulletin board called Home Base. The world's, at that time, certainly Silicon Valley's

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largest bulletin board system. I had 32 phone lines coming in. We didn't have the internet back then,

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folks. So you couldn't just send the message to Russia. And what happened is, you know, all of your

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thousands of users on the bulletin board downloaded the good shit, and then uploaded it to other

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bulletin boards where it was downloaded and uploaded. Now, within a month, I had 5 million users.

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Within four months, I had $30 million in the bank. And were you even incorporated? Did you corporate?

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No, fuck no, nothing, nothing. You know, you don't plan this shit, people. You can't plan success. Not

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fucking possible. Not possible. No. What you do is immediately, I quit Lockheed. I quit the

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judicious most incredible job any technologist could ever fucking have a goddamn black program

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with the US government. Do as I could do whatever I fucking wanted and make 10 times what any other

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technologist could ever fucking make. And I quit that immediately. I lost my wife, my house, everything.

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Because I realized that this was an opportunity. I quit Lockheed instantly. I didn't even give

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notice. My boss said, what? Are you crazy? Come in and talk to me. I said, no, I'm not coming in. I quit.

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I'm sorry. I'm not coming in. And you have to do that. I'm not talking to you anymore.

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My world has changed. My wife, who had a job as a flight attendant, just walked out.

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I lost everything. Everything. But three months later, I was a multimillionaire.

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This is what success is. You can't plan success, people. That's idiocy. You have to smell

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the opportunity wafting past your nose. And you have to be willing to risk your job, your wife,

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your house, your kids, everything you've ever fucking loved. And if you're not,

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stay where you are.

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So let's talk about another boom and opportunity.

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We have time for one more question. I have another interview coming up in three minutes. My apologies.

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I guess if I had a last question for you, I'd say, what is the scariest thing about the internet right

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now? And if you controlled the whole internet, what would you change?

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I don't know. The second half, I'll tell you what the scariest thing is, is that you got no privacy,

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people. None. If you think that antivirus software or security software is protecting you,

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whether the encryption is protecting you, it's not. Encryption was designed 30 years ago to protect

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from a thing called man-in-the-middle attack. What does that mean? I'm communicating with someone in

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Australia and there's someone listening. There's no man in the middle anymore. Please,

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fucking God, you understand that our smartphones and our computers and our pads

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and our laptops are designed for one thing, to find out exactly what the fuck you are doing,

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where and when. There's no man in the middle. You in your fucking system have the software that's

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watching what you type into your secure software that's going to be encrypted and sent. And on the

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other end, you have software that's watching because you can't read encrypted communication. It has to be

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decrypted and displayed on your fucking screen. But they're reading. What's displayed on your screen,

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people? And they're watching what you type in. Encryption is the most worthless piece of shit today. And people

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actually pay for it. What the fuck is wrong with you people? And I'm really sorry. I must go. Thanks, John. I enjoyed the time.

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All right.