Skynet 2024: The Infrastructure is Complete! | Rob Braxman

➡ Rob Braxman talks about how google recently announced a new feature for Android phones that’s similar to Apple’s “Find My iPhone”. This feature uses a wireless communication system called a mesh network, which allows devices to talk to each other without needing the internet. This technology could lead to a loss of privacy as it can track your location very accurately. However, it also has the potential to remotely control specific devices, which could be useful in the future.

I just heard a recent announcement from Google about find my Android, and for many of you, this would have gone into one year and out the other. Hey, no big deal. It’s an old feature that Google’s copying from Apple. Actually, it is a big deal because up until this point, the infrastructure of what I call Skynet reached only 50% of the population. Now it is 100%. What do I mean by Skynet? It’s a quietly implemented independent and wireless communications infrastructure called a mesh network, which, believe it or not, can power the autonomous devices you saw in the movie Terminator.

This mesh network can be used to give commands to specific devices as well as receive information from specific devices. Without a central network like the Internet, a mesh network is more powerful than you think. The popular users of this technology have so far been simplistic. But the scary part is what this technology can do, and most of you are so unaware, this will also translate to a complete loss of privacy to most people.

There’s still a way for maybe 1% of us to stay away from Skynet, and I will tell you about that later in this video. But generally speaking, this trend will continue. It won’t be long before every electronic device is tapped into this network, and the images of AI controlling machines are not a distant possibility at all. If you’re interested in learning about Skynet in real life, stay right there.

I made several videos on Skynet, and the first one went viral with over a million views. So this is a topic of interest. And Skynet brings us images of the Terminator movie, where John Connor is being chased by drones with laser weapons and powerful robots called Terminators, all controlled by the central AI called Skynet. Universal Studios got rid of the Terminator show at their theme park long ago, but the images in that show sticks in my head even more than the movies in the universal show.

I’ve always wondered about how the drones and robots coordinated with each other as they chased John Connor. I’m sure the original writer of the show was thinking of satellite communications, but I knew that was inefficient in real life. And then, as the modern technology evolved in the real world, it became very clear to me how it can be done now. And this should give you a hint of what this technology can be used for in the future.

It’s called peer to peer communications. No need for a central Internet. Internet disconnected devices can talk to each other. Internet disconnected devices can receive and send instructions. What makes this technology so prevalent now is the use of the bluetooth technology called Bluetooth low energy, or BlE, which, if you didn’t know, is now built into every phone. Many brands have home security cameras, Alexa Echo devices, and many Internet of things or IoT devices.

What changed recently is that Google turned on their part of this infrastructure and it was just announced a week ago. Let me explain how BLE is used to power mesh networks and what this really means. Technically speaking. I went into extreme detail about how this BLE standard works in an older video, which I will link in the description. But the basic concept is that the BLE standard reprovision existing Bluetooth devices to perform a new function all by software.

So without changing the hardware, the radio in Bluetooth was reused to send longer range signals. Originally, the Bluetooth standard was meant for continuous data streaming, like for Bluetooth headphones. This gave it a range of 12ft or so. Now BLE just sends a much stronger signal in short pulses, which can then be received by other Bluetooth devices devices. Although the signals are stronger, it doesn’t use much power because the radio signal is so brief.

That’s why it’s called Bluetooth. Low energy a ble message can be received in a typical range of 200 to 600ft, depending on obstructions. The most common device now since this technology was made available is the Apple Air tag. An Apple Airtag sends out an identity broadcast every few seconds. IPhones in the area are set to listen to it and then retransmits that signal to be heard by other iPhones.

This retransmission gives it extra range. Then devices with Internet access will wrap that Airtag identity with their current location and forward that message to Apple HQ. That’s how an Airtag is found. Because of its low power use, an airtag can last about a year just on its little battery. Just to show you the flexibility of this technology. An iPhone can be found even when off, because the phone turns on ble and then it sends a signal like an airtag.

And now Google announced that the Pixel eight and Pixel eight Pro will also have this feature with find my Android. So in a few years, newer models of Androids will also operate like this when the power is off. At the moment, this tech is limited to the Pixel eight family because current Android phones cannot power Bluetooth when the power is off. But people listening to this news really misses the full effect of this technology.

The point is that Google just turned on the ble capability of each and every Android, so that now androids talk to each other like iPhones do. This is active today since roughly half the population in the US uses Androids and the other half uses iPhones, then we have pretty much total coverage. Just about every individual will be in the range and subject to the capabilities of ble mesh networks.

This is independent of the use of the Find my Android feature. When off, it means find my Android will find every device. The part that’s interesting though, isn’t the Airtag. For an airtag to function, each phone has to send its own location to hq. If it finds an airtag near it, the AirTag itself does not announce a location. Now I’ve already told you in past videos that location tracking is 24/7 on all iPhones and Google Androids.

So in essence nothing has changed here. Because you couldn’t find your Android device location and some obvious UI on the phone OS, you figured you weren’t being tracked. Of course you were. And I explained in many videos how this tracking of location is stored in the Google sensor vault and is used for geofencing. But the difference with BLE is that instead of the 6ft accuracy of the old Wi Fi triangulation and GPS tracking, the BLE standard additionally allows direction sensing, meaning a compass heading.

So with this ability it is able to triangulate in inches. This old location technology could find you in a building. The new technology could accurately determine which side of the wall you were in, and it works indoors without GPS satellites. Let me explain though, the other pieces in the puzzle of a BLE based mesh network. BLE is peer to peer communications. It does not not need any Internet.

Each BLE device is able to retransmit the original signal until the transmit time limit is reached or an acknowledgement is received by some device. This means in a typical city, which is at least one phone per adult, and even more, there is sufficient coverage to transmit signals all over, even without any Internet. Now, the currently used with find my phone or airtags is with Internet access, so typically an acknowledgement can be sent back to stop the retransmission once the signal is transmitted over the Internet.

But I want to make clear what this technology could do. Signaling can occur without any centralized network infrastructure as long as the radio signal can be heard. I want to point out another feature. This ble signaling is not just about location tracking. BLE allows bi directional commands and can send an address message to a specific device. And in case you’re wondering, the BLE standard is not just addressable, but it is also encrypted, which means you will not even know what the signal is.

So the possibilities are endless here. Remote control of specific devices become possible. Let’s say some three letter agency wants to activate a feature in a particular phone. This doesn’t have to go through the Internet alone. Even if a phone is disconnected from the Internet or have no SIM card, it would be possible to give commands to a phone. Let me tell you a specific use that I would be thinking about.

As you know from my prior videos, Apple put in code on an iPhone to do client side scanning and just to make clear what this is again, it is the iPhone AI chip being given encrypted instructions to scan particular phones for particular content. If a device is found with this content, then the signal can be sent back to Apple HQ. Originally Apple announced that this technology was to be used to find illegal CSAM content, but they got pushback on that and put that implementation on hold.

However, the tech for doing the client side scanning is still on the iPhones. I think CSam was just a cover in. Now the tech is there for phone content to be scanned. It is active as shown on the previous Louis Rosman video. The point though that I am making here is that instructions to the phone AI to search for content can be done via ble mesh network and so the phone could receive instructions even without an Internet connection or even a SIM card.

In other words, no device can escape and the instructions can be sent when the phone is off. Certainly this is true now of iPhones and now pixel eight s and likely all newer androids will be supporting this tech going forward. As you’ve heard as well, the newer pixels I believe since pixel six and all iPhone since iPhone X have an AI chip. This AI chip is capable of evaluating images and be able to discern content.

So just to give you potential capabilities here, phones can be given remote instructions to turn cameras on and evaluate its surroundings to judge what its seeing. And then it could send a signal peer to peer to another set of phones nearby so that it eventually reaches hq again to make it clear this is individual device addressing and now you can see how close it is to the original image of the Terminator show where drones were being given specific instructions to search for John Connor and the Schwarzenegger Terminator.

And each drone is individually reacting to its environment. So the imagery of a centralized AI and AI equipped individual machines is not so theoretical anymore. This is unfortunately now a reality. Let me describe the full mesh network environment for you. Currently there are three mesh networks that are world encompassing. The previous largest network was the Apple mesh network which was powered by iPhones. Then this was followed shortly by the Amazon sidewalk, which was powered by ring cameras and Alexa echoes.

The Amazon sidewalk network was used, for example, by tile trackers before I found out that the coverage for tile trackers were spotty and that was encouraging. People weren’t going for the ring cameras and Alexa echoes as much as I thought, but the Google network is scary. Although Google’s phone share is only 44% in the US, in the rest of the world androids make up 70% of the phones in use, so this is an indication of more widespread coverage of the mesh networks worldwide.

We may never actually learn the immediate uses of this technology in all devices since this is where the encryption can be used against us. Let me tell you the specific immediate fears that I have related to privacy with the now total coverage of phone use with ble mesh networks. As we learn in the Apple use of the mesh network now every phone can be geo located within inches, so I can imagine that this will be a future application of true two fa or two factor authentication.

The phone OS could verify with the computer OS that you are actually right next to the device you wish to authenticate, again with an accuracy of eight inches. Contact tracing is now automatically active, and now our interactions with each other will be an even more refined Google sensor vault. Someone could determine how much time you had contact with certain individuals and how frequently. There will no longer be a way for an average person to evade this tracking, as turning off phones or having no SIM card or wifi will no longer be limitations.

If they want to find you, they will. If they want to find out what you do all day, they will. If they want to find out who you hang with, they will. We made it easy for them. We didn’t need to have a chip embedded under our skin. We willingly carry a device that is equivalent to being chipped now. Fortunately, this mesh coverage is not 100%. I look at all the listed changes in all versions of Android open source project since Android ten and did not find a single reference to BlE.

This means that I don’t have to hunt this in the Android open source code, which made sense. Normally. I wouldn’t expect any source code which included Google communications, especially encrypted ones, to be advertised on Android open source project. Thus this ble implementation must be part of Google services, and I would expect that this would be implemented on most versions of Android. I don’t know how far back they will go to load this on Android devices, but I’m sure they will want as much mesh network coverage as possible by reaching like 90% of the target devices with this feature.

The conclusion though for now is that the Google phones running Android open source project without Google services will not participate in this Google mesh network. This makes these devices even more valuable to us as the extreme geolocation features will not be applied to us who use the Google phones. The Google phones also do not participate in the geolocation capabilities of standard androids at this moment. This makes it one of the very few devices that are not impacted.

However, understand the reach of this technology. Devices that respond to ble need not be just phones. Already ring cameras operate inside the Amazon sidewalk mesh network. This means that potentially even custom devices can be used to do surveillance in areas, even temporarily using battery operated devices, or even be long term devices powered by small solar panels. No network infrastructure installation would be required. This is the expected true outcome of mesh networks in the short term.

For example, surveillance cameras with AI capabilities could be used to search for specific faces. This can already be accomplished using the tech in newer phones. Later on, the instructions over the mesh network could be used to give instructions to ambulatory devices like robots and drones. This could give complete independence to these devices because instructions could be quickly given to a local AI and the device can implement those instructions and all these instructions and whatever the device reports are all done via radio over the mesh network.

So in the future when you start seeing robots and they’re getting instructions without Internet or any fixed network infrastructure, remember that I told you so. Now all we need is the centralized AI, which we currently have several to have control over these robots. And the fun will really begin as the news has tighten on our ability to remain private. I’m glad to note that the solutions I’ve come up with are still working and each moment prevent our data from being collected, the better we can defend ourselves.

We have a community of privacy oriented people on my app Braxme who discuss these issues daily. We now have over 100,000 active users and on that platform I have the Braxme store that has products I made for your defense. We have products like the Google phones that are still free from location tracking, the Simfree Bracs, virtual phone service, identity free Braxmail and BytesVPn. Please join us there and be part of our community.

Thank you for watching and see you next time. .

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