I do a lot of hits these days as a contributor to CNN, but I don’t post most of them — you’re getting the raw thinking here as a subscriber. But every so often the conversation produces some nice, new moments, and this interview with Elex Michaelson last night felt like one of those.
Thanks, as always, for your support, and here’s more context on what we were discussing:
AI Invented a Fake Friend to Break Into a Company
In 2022 I interviewed a young Nigerian man who had spent literal years posing as a single American, trying to get someone, anyone, to write him back on WhatsApp. Finally, he pulled in a lonely widow in the United States, and eventually talked her into sending him a life-changing $248,000. He spoke to me out of Christian regret for what he’d done—he returned the money, and he’s now a consultant to Western cybersecurity firms—and I did my best to bring across what I believe he was: a desperately impoverished person trying his best to escape.
