Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Manish Goregaokar, a senior software engineer and member of the Rust security response team, to discuss what LLMs do to the cost side of running a sophisticated con. They walk through a scam built for programmers: a plausible company, a few rounds of interviews, and an NDA signed via "sign in with email" that quietly hands an attacker the identity account everything else resets against. A version of it hit at least five people in the Rust community within days of Manish publishing on the subject, and Patrick describes being targeted himself by someone posing as a Bloomberg reporter who wanted him on a Zoom call with a codec problem. They also cover money mules and the three stages of laundering, the $25 million Hong Kong transfer authorized on a fully deepfaked video call, and why the only durable individual defense is refusing to trust any communication you did not initiate.

–
Full transcript available here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/what-llms-do-to-the-economics-of-scams-with-manish-goregaokar/
–
Presenting Sponsors: Mercury, MongoDB & Granola

Complex Systems is presented by Mercury—radically better banking for founders. Mercury's new feature Command brings an LLM directly into your banking interface, so checking balances, finding invoices, or sending a wire is as easy as asking. Apply online in minutes at https://mercury.com/. 
If meetings consistently leave you with hazy action items and lost context, Granola handles the transcription so you can actually participate and gives you searchable notes afterward. Try it free at granola.ai/complexsystems with code COMPLEXSYSTEMS

What's the point of building faster with AI if your database can't keep up? MongoDB's native data model mirrors the language LLMs already speak. Ship at the speed of AI while staying ACID compliant at Fortune 500 scale. Start building at https://mongodb.com/ai.

–
Links:
Manish Goregaokar’s blog: https://manishearth.github.io/  
Manish on X: https://x.com/ManishEarth
–
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:27) The future of the con is already here
(01:40) Scams are run like businesses
(03:30) A scam aimed at programmers
(05:12) Why single sign-on is the one ring to rule them all
(06:50) Persistent threats against individuals
(08:58) What LLMs change about cost
(11:40) Manual scams and business email compromise
(14:30) How money movement constrains scammers
(17:39) The industry that helps you pay ransoms
(19:32) Bespoke attacks on individual targets
(21:41) The Rust community gets targeted
(23:02) Supply chain attacks and long-lived impersonation
(24:58) Money mules and the three stages of laundering
(28:35) Why law enforcement struggles with internet crime
(30:01) Sponsors: Mercury │ Granola
(33:03) Patriotic hackers and the post-Soviet talent pool
(35:27) What individuals can do
(36:27) Only trust communication you initiate
(38:21) Wire fraud in real estate closings
(41:07) Why legitimate institutions look like scams
(45:22) Who eats the loss
(47:21) Sponsor: MongoDB
(48:12) Why banks can't just block new payees
(50:45) Verification protocols and family passwords
(53:07) Urgency and secrecy
(54:44) Systemic fixes and who pays
(57:55) Open weights and the coming wave
(01:02:17) Wrap

In this episode, Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Misha Gurevich, CEO of Aerolamp, and Vivian Belenky, its chief scientist and a researcher at Columbia, to discuss why UVC, a wavelength of light that inactivates airborne pathogens but is absorbed harmlessly by the dead outer layer of human skin, remains almost entirely undeployed. They explain the physics and safety case for 222 nanometers, the economics of installation, and preliminary South African trial results showing 90% suppression of tuberculosis transmission in hospital wards. 
–
Full transcript available here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/the-economics-of-putting-germicidal-light-in-every-room/
–
Presenting Sponsors: Mercury & MongoDB

Complex Systems is presented by Mercury—radically better banking for founders. Mercury's new feature Command brings an LLM directly into your banking interface, so checking balances, finding invoices, or sending a wire is as easy as asking. Apply online in minutes at https://mercury.com/. 

What's the point of building faster with AI if your database can't keep up? MongoDB's native data model mirrors the language LLMs already speak. Ship at the speed of AI while staying ACID compliant at Fortune 500 scale. Start building at https://mongodb.com/ai.

–
Links:
Aerolamp: https://aerolamp.net/ 
–
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:58) What far UVC does to pathogens
(03:25) Why it's safe for skin and eyes
(09:24) What a typical deployment looks like
(11:21) Why isn't this everywhere already?
(13:55) Where the rollout should be prioritized
(17:31) The economics per room and per building
(20:56) Lamp lifetime and maintenance
(21:48) When does the evidence become undeniable?
(23:24) Tuberculosis and long-term care as early proof points
(27:16) Pandemic math and kneecapping the next outbreak
(30:16) Sponsors: Mercury | MongoDB
(32:49) R0, K-factor, and why the built environment beats opt-in
(34:23) Building codes, ASHRAE 241, and competing technologies
(39:11) The deployment curve and the awareness problem
(42:33) Scaling manufacturing: krypton chloride versus LEDs
(45:14) Price versus cost, and where the inflection point is
(47:35) Should you put one in your house?
(51:51) What would make this fail?
(56:09) The hygiene hypothesis objection
(01:01:13) The precautionary principle and reasoning under uncertainty
(01:06:04) Where the first million dollars should go
(01:10:49) The business case and the heckler's veto
(01:14:51) Where to find Aerolamp
(01:15:52) Wrap

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Garrison Lovely, journalist and author of Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion-Dollar Race to Replace Us and How to Stop It, to map the three-sided debate over AI risk and why the arguments keep talking past each other. 

They then turn to what cheap cognition does to surveillance that already exists: FinCEN receives roughly 4 million suspicious activity reports a year and reads almost none of them, ICE agents run about a million queries against that database annually, and every podcast ever recorded is now transcribable for approximately nothing. The conversation covers capabilities denialism, ablated open-weights models, the fraud supply chain, and why AI is also unusually good at writing the Regulation E letter that gets your bank to fix your problem.
–
Full transcript available here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/cheap-cognition-and-the-end-of-practical-obscurity-with-garrison-lovely/
–
Presenting Sponsors: Mercury, MongoDB & Chainguard

Complex Systems is presented by Mercury—radically better banking for founders. Mercury's new feature Command brings an LLM directly into your banking interface, so checking balances, finding invoices, or sending a wire is as easy as asking. Apply online in minutes at https://mercury.com/. 

What's the point of building faster with AI if your database can't keep up? MongoDB's native data model mirrors the language LLMs already speak. Ship at the speed of AI while staying ACID compliant at Fortune 500 scale. Start building at https://mongodb.com/ai.

If attackers are using AI to weaponize code faster than any team can review it, your scanners won't save you. Chainguard builds libraries and container images from source, verified all the way down, with near-zero CVEs and zero malware. Build safely at https://www.chainguard.dev/. 
–
Links:
Obsolete: The AI Industry’s Trillion Dollar Race to Replace Us―and How to Stop It: https://www.amazon.com/Obsolete-Power-Profit-Machine-Superintelligence/dp/1682196305 
–
Timestamps:
(00:00) Preview
(00:43) Intro
(01:51) The three-sided debate over AI risk
(05:32) Power, politics, and the tech backlash
(09:49) Capabilities denialism and AI tells
(14:54) The obsoleting machine
(17:09) The Turing test is dead
(18:56) Languages for free, then software engineering
(22:37) Sponsors: Mercury | MongoDB
(25:09) How high up the stack do the models decide?
(29:11) Surveillance and cheap cognition
(32:38) Podcasts, FinCEN, and the end of practical obscurity
(38:35) Section 702 and the data broker loophole
(39:35) Sponsor: Chainguard
(40:55) Section 702 and the data broker loophole (cont’d)
(47:23) Institutional friction and a million ICE queries
(53:29) Security through obscurity no longer works
(54:54) Scams, fraud, and ablated models
(1:00:20) Personal utility versus societal backlash
(1:02:16) AI as a tool for redress
(1:06:34) State capacity and regulating what you understand
(1:12:37) Tobacco, nuclear, and AlphaFold: strangle it or steer it
(1:18:37) Where to find Garrison and the book
(1:20:32) Wrap

In this episode, Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Leila Clark, founder of Stardrift and formerly a software engineer at Jane Street, to discuss her essay "What Are You Getting Paid In?"  They cover how a Jane Street manager staffed the firm's least lucrative corner by paying people in culture, why Ken Griffin is worth roughly fifty Taylor Swifts, and how a longtime Google product manager quietly ends up with Grammy-winner money. The conversation ranges from academia's brutal tournament structure and YC as a script to founderdom to the one currency Taylor Swift holds that Ken Griffin's $50 billion buys only awkwardly: a restaurant reservation anywhere in New York.
–
Full transcript available here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/what-youre-actually-getting-paid-in-with-leila-clark/
–
Presenting Sponsors: Mercury, Chainguard & MongoDB 

Complex Systems is presented by Mercury—radically better banking for founders. Mercury's new feature Command brings an LLM directly into your banking interface, so checking balances, finding invoices, or sending a wire is as easy as asking. Apply online in minutes at https://mercury.com/.

If attackers are using AI to weaponize code faster than any team can review it, your scanners won't save you. Chainguard builds libraries and container images from source, verified all the way down, with near-zero CVEs and zero malware. Build safely at https://www.chainguard.dev/.

What's the point of building faster with AI if your database can't keep up? MongoDB's native data model mirrors the language LLMs already speak. Ship at the speed of AI while staying ACID compliant at Fortune 500 scale. Start building at https://mongodb.com/ai.

–
Links:
What are you getting paid in: https://www.approachwithalacrity.com/p/what-are-you-getting-paid-in 
–
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(01:23) What are you getting paid in?
(03:16) Scripts, teacher figures, and hitting capitalism
(08:18) The academia trap
(11:08) Paying people in culture: Jane Street's back office
(14:03) Ken Griffin vs. Taylor Swift
(16:53) Learning about finance by osmosis (or not)
(20:44) Sponsors: Mercury | Chainguard
(23:46) Musician money vs. Google money
(30:03) Keeping up with the Joneses and the meritocratic ladder
(33:12) YC as a script to founderdom
(36:19) What entrepreneurship pays you in
(39:12) Gratitude, culture, and quirky preferences
(40:11) Sponsor: MongoDB
(43:48) Does winning this script look like winning to you?
(48:29) Don't end the week with nothing
(51:06) Fame and living in bubbles
(56:57) Restaurant reservations as a currency
(1:02:57) Where to find Leila
(01:03:35) Wrap

Patrick McKenzie is joined by returning guest Clara Collier, editor-in-chief of Asterisk Magazine, to discuss how working writers and reporters actually use LLMs. Patrick walks through the machinery behind his recent SPLC reporting, including "parallel construction" with LLMs: when sources can't go on the record, models can surface public confirmation of the same facts in unguarded podcast interviews, press releases, and prepared remarks. They also cover why the best smoking gun sat unnoticed on the coalition's own Twitter account, the David O. Selznick theory of the corporate memo, and where hardball politics in a democracy ends and crimes begin.
–
Full transcript available here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/llms-and-writers-with-clara-collier-of-asterisk-magazine/
–
Presenting Sponsors: Mercury, MongoDB & Chainguard

Complex Systems is presented by Mercury—radically better banking for founders. Mercury's new feature Command brings an LLM directly into your banking interface, so checking balances, finding invoices, or sending a wire is as easy as asking. Apply online in minutes at https://mercury.com/. 

What's the point of building faster with AI if your database can't keep up? MongoDB's native data model mirrors the language LLMs already speak. Ship at the speed of AI while staying ACID compliant at Fortune 500 scale. Start building at https://mongodb.com/ai.

If attackers are using AI to weaponize code faster than any team can review it, your scanners won't save you. Chainguard builds libraries and container images from source, verified all the way down, with near-zero CVEs and zero malware. Build safely at https://www.chainguard.dev/. 

–
Links:
Complex Systems on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@patio11podcast 
Asterisk Magazine: https://asteriskmag.com/ 
–
Timestamps:
(00:00) Preview
(00:51) Intro
(01:16) How legacy media feels about LLMs
(05:02) Writing as thinking: why the byline matters
(08:51) LLMs as feedback partners and simulated readers
(12:39) The future of the corporate memo
(15:58) Sponsor: Mercury | MongoDB
(18:30) Memos, de-skilling, and thinking on paper
(20:02) David O. Selznick's memos and the MrBeast production doc
(23:28) Can models introspect on their own work?
(30:06) Sponsor: Chainguard
(31:27) The SPLC investigation
(37:07) Chains of evidence and protecting sources
(45:20) Parallel construction with LLMs
(49:41) Mining podcasts for unguarded admissions
(59:35) Deepen your strengths, don't just patch weaknesses
(1:03:34) The smoking gun the LLM missed
(1:04:48) Hardball politics versus crimes
(1:10:48) Why a payments newsletter reported a political story
(1:16:19) Reporting stories that will be weaponized
(1:20:24) The tech right and internal company politics
(1:23:44) Debanking discourse and drawing distinctions
(1:30:21) Hate speech, social sanctions, and owning decisions
(1:34:51) Wrap