>> We're back at the ARIA Las Vegas. We're covering CrowdStrike's Fal.Con 22. First one since 2019. Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson on theCUBE. Adam Meyers is here, he is the Senior Vice President of Intelligence at CrowdStrike. Adam, thanks for coming to theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> Interesting times, isn't it? You're very welcome. Senior Vice President of Intelligence, tell us what your role is. >> So I run all of our intelligence offerings. All of our analysts, we have a couple hundred analysts that work at CrowdStrike tracking threat actors. There's 185 threat actors that we track today. We're constantly adding more of them and it requires us to really have that visibility and understand how they operate so that we can inform our other products: our XDR, our Cloud Workload Protections and really integrate all of this around the threat actor. >> So it's that threat hunting capability that CrowdStrike has. That's what you're sort of... >> Well, so think of it this way. When we launched the company 11 years ago yesterday, what we wanted to do was to tell customers, to tell people that, well, you don't have a malware problem, you have an adversary problem. There are humans that are out there conducting these attacks, and if you know who they are what they're up to, how they operate then you're better positioned to defend against them. And so that's really at the core, what CrowdStrike started with and all of our products are powered by intelligence. All of our services are our OverWatch and our Falcon complete, all powered by intelligence because we want to know who the threat actors are and what they're doing so we can stop them. >> So for instance like you can stop known malware. A lot of companies can stop known malware, but you also can stop unknown malware. And I infer that the intelligence is part of that equation, is that right? >> Absolutely. That that's the outcome. That's the output of the intelligence but I could also tell you who these threat actors are, where they're operating out of, show you pictures of some of them, that's the threat intel. We are tracking down to the individual persona in many cases, these various threats whether they be Chinese nation state, Russian threat actors, Iran, North Korea, we track as I said, quite a few of these threats. And over time, we develop a really robust deep knowledge about who they are and how they operate. >> Okay. And we're going to get into some of that, the big four and cyber. But before we do, I want to ask you about the eCrime index stats, the ECX you guys call it a little side joke for all your nerds out there. Maybe you could explain that Adam >> Assembly humor. >> Yeah right, right. So, but, what is that index? You guys, how often do you publish it? What are you learning from that? >> Yeah, so it was modeled off of the Dow Jones industrial average. So if you look at the Dow Jones it's a composite index that was started in the late 1800s. And they took a couple of different companies that were the industrial component of the economy back then, right. Textiles and railroads and coal and steel and things like that. And they use that to approximate the overall health of the economy. So if you take these different stocks together, swizzle 'em together, and figure out some sort of number you could say, look, it's up. The economy's doing good. It's down, not doing so good. So after World War II, everybody was exuberant and positive about the end of the war. The DGI goes up, the oil crisis in the seventies goes down, COVID hits goes up, sorry, goes down. And then everybody realizes that they can use Amazon still and they can still get the things they need goes back up with the eCrime index. We took that approach to say what is the health of the underground economy? When you read about any of these ransomware attacks or data extortion attacks there are criminal groups that are working together in order to get things spammed out or to buy credentials and things like that. And so what the eCrime index does is it takes 24 different observables, right? The price of a ransom, the number of ransom attacks, the fluctuation in cryptocurrency, how much stolen material is being sold for on the underground. And we're constantly computing this number to understand is the eCrime ecosystem healthy? Is it thriving or is it under pressure? And that lets us understand what's going on in the world and kind of contextualize it. Give an example, Microsoft on patch Tuesday releases 56 vulnerabilities. 11 of them are critical. Well guess what? After hack Tuesday. So after patch Tuesday is hack Wednesday. And so all of those 11 vulnerabilities are exploitable. And now you have threat actors that have a whole new array of weapons that they can deploy and bring to bear against their victims after that patch Tuesday. So that's hack Wednesday. Conversely we'll get something like the colonial pipeline. Colonial pipeline attack May of 21, I think it was, comes out and all of the various underground forums where these ransomware operators are doing their business. They freak out because they don't want law enforcement. President Biden is talking about them and he's putting pressure on them. They don't want this ransomware component of what they're doing to bring law enforcement, bring heat on them. So they deplatform them. They kick 'em off. And when they do that, the ransomware stops being as much of a factor at that point in time. And the eCrime index goes down. So we can look at holidays, and right around Thanksgiving, which is coming up pretty soon, it's going to go up because there's so much online commerce with cyber Monday and such, right? You're going to see this increase in online activity; eCrime actors want to take advantage of that. When Christmas comes, they take vacation too; they're going to spend time with their families, so it goes back down and it stays down till around the end of the Russian Orthodox Christmas, which you can probably extrapolate why that is. And then it goes back up. So as it's fluctuating, it gives us the ability to really just start tracking what that economy looks like. >> Realtime indicator of that crypto. >> I mean, you talked about, talked about hack Wednesday, and before that you mentioned, you know, the big four, and I think you said 185 threat actors that you're tracking, is 180, is number 185 on that list? Somebody living in their basement in their mom's basement or are the resources necessary to get on that list? Such that it's like, no, no, no, no. this is very, very organized, large groups of people. Hollywood would have you believe that it's guy with a laptop, hack Wednesday, (Dave Nicholson mimics keyboard clacking noises) and everything done. >> Right. >> Are there individuals who are doing things like that or are these typically very well organized? >> That's a great question. And I think it's an important one to ask and it's both it tends to be more, the bigger groups. There are some one-off ones where it's one or two people. Sometimes they get big. Sometimes they get small. One of the big challenges. Have you heard of ransomware as a service? >> Of course. Oh my God. Any knucklehead can be a ransomwarist. >> Exactly. So we don't track those knuckleheads as much unless they get onto our radar somehow, they're conducting a lot of operations against our customers or something like that. But what we do track is that ransomware as a service platform because the affiliates, the people that are using it they come, they go and, you know, it could be they're only there for a period of time. Sometimes they move between different ransomware services, right? They'll use the one that's most useful for them that that week or that month, they're getting the best rate because it's rev sharing. They get a percentage that platform gets percentage of the ransom. So, you know, they negotiate a better deal. They might move to a different ransomware platform. So that's really hard to track. And it's also, you know, I think more important for us to understand the platform and the technology that is being used than the individual that's doing it. >> Yeah. Makes sense. Alright, let's talk about the big four. China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Tell us about, you know, how you monitor these folks. Are there different signatures for each? Can you actually tell, you know based on the hack who's behind it? >> So yeah, it starts off, you know motivation is a huge factor. China conducts espionage, they do it for diplomatic purposes. They do it for military and political purposes. And they do it for economic espionage. All of these things map to known policies that they put out, the Five Year Plan, the Made in China 2025, the Belt and Road Initiative, it's all part of their efforts to become a regional and ultimately a global hegemon. >> They're not stealing nickels and dimes. >> No they're stealing intellectual property. They're stealing trade secrets. They're stealing negotiation points. When there's, you know a high speed rail or something like that. And they use a set of tools and they have a set of behaviors and they have a set of infrastructure and a set of targets that as we look at all of these things together we can derive who they are by motivation and the longer we observe them, the more data we get, the more we can get that attribution. I could tell you that there's X number of Chinese threat groups that we track under Panda, right? And they're associated with the Ministry of State Security. There's a whole other set. That's too associated with the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force. So, I mean, these are big operations. They're intelligence agencies that are operating out of China. Iran has a different set of targets. They have a different set of motives. They go after North American and Israeli businesses right now that's kind of their main operation. And they're doing something called hack and lock and leak. With a lock and leak, what they're doing is they're deploying ransomware. They don't care about getting a ransom payment. They're just doing it to disrupt the target. And then they're leaking information that they steal during that operation that brings embarrassment. It brings compliance, regulatory, legal impact for that particular entity. So it's disruptive >> The chaos creators that's.. >> Well, you know I think they're trying to create a they're trying to really impact the legitimacy of some of these targets and the trust that their customers and their partners and people have in them. And that is psychological warfare in a certain way. And it, you know is really part of their broader initiative. Look at some of the other things that they've done they've hacked into like the missile defense system in Israel, and they've turned on the sirens, right? Those are all things that they're doing for a specific purpose, and that's not China, right? Like as you start to look at this stuff, you can start to really understand what they're up to. Russia very much been busy targeting NATO and NATO countries and Ukraine. Obviously the conflict that started in February has been a huge focus for these threat actors. And then as we look at North Korea, totally different. They're doing, there was a major crypto attack today. They're going after these crypto platforms, they're going after DeFi platforms. They're going after all of this stuff that most people don't even understand and they're stealing the crypto currency and they're using it for revenue generation. These nuclear weapons don't pay for themselves, their research and development don't pay for themselves. And so they're using that cyber operation to either steal money or steal intelligence. >> They need the cash. Yeah. >> Yeah. And they also do economic targeting because Kim Jong Un had said back in 2016 that they need to improve the lives of North Koreans. They have this national economic development strategy. And that means that they need, you know, I think only 30% of North Korea has access to reliable power. So having access to clean energy sources and renewable energy sources, that's important to keep the people happy and stop them from rising up against the regime. So that's the type of economic espionage that they're conducting. >> Well, those are the big four. If there were big five or six, I would presume US and some Western European countries would be on there. Do you track, I mean, where United States obviously has you know, people that are capable of this we're out doing our thing, and- >> So I think- >> That defense or offense, where do we sit in this matrix? >> Well, I think the big five would probably include eCrime. We also track India, Pakistan. We track actors out of Columbia, out of Turkey, out of Syria. So there's a whole, you know this problem is getting worse over time. It's proliferating. And I think COVID was also, you know a driver there because so many of these countries couldn't move human assets around because everything was getting locked down. As machine learning and artificial intelligence and all of this makes its way into the cameras at border and transfer points, it's hard to get a human asset through there. And so cyber is a very attractive, cheap and deniable form of espionage and gives them operational capabilities, not, you know and to your question about US and other kind of five I friendly type countries we have not seen them targeting our customers. So we focus on the threats that target our customers. >> Right. >> And so, you know, if we were to find them at a customer environment sure. But you know, when you look at some of the public reporting that's out there, the malware that's associated with them is focused on, you know, real bad people, and it's, it's physically like crypted to their hard drive. So unless you have sensor on, you know, an Iranian or some other laptop that might be target or something like that. >> Well, like Stuxnet did. >> Yeah. >> Right so. >> You won't see it. Right. See, so yeah. >> Well Symantec saw it but way back when right? Back in the day. >> Well, I mean, if you want to go down that route I think it actually came from a company in the region that was doing the IR and they were working with Symantec. >> Oh, okay. So, okay. So it was a local >> Yeah. I think Crisis, I think was the company that first identified it. And then they worked with Symantec. >> It Was, they found it, I guess, a logic controller. I forget what it was. >> It was a long time ago, so I might not have that completely right. >> But it was a seminal moment in the industry. >> Oh. And it was a seminal moment for Iran because you know, that I think caused them to get into cyber operations. Right. When they realized that something like that could happen that bolstered, you know there was a lot of underground hacking forums in Iran. And, you know, after Stuxnet, we started seeing that those hackers were dropping their hacker names and they were starting businesses. They were starting to try to go after government contracts. And they were starting to build training offensive programs, things like that because, you know they realized that this is an opportunity there. >> Yeah. We were talking earlier about this with Shawn and, you know, in the nuclear war, you know the Cold War days, you had the mutually assured destruction. It's not as black and white in the cyber world. Right. Cause as, as Robert Gates told me, you know a few years ago, we have a lot more to lose. So we have to be somewhat, as the United States, careful as to how much of an offensive posture we take. >> Well here's a secret. So I have a background on political science. So mutually assured destruction, I think is a deterrent strategy where you have two kind of two, two entities that like they will destroy each other if they so they're disinclined to go down that route. >> Right. >> With cyber I really don't like that mutually assured destruction >> That doesn't fit right. >> I think it's deterrents by denial. Right? So raising the cost, if they were to conduct a cyber operation, raising that cost that they don't want to do it, they don't want to incur the impact of that. Right. And think about this in terms of a lot of people are asking about would China invade Taiwan. And so as you look at the cost that that would have on the Chinese military, the POA, the POA Navy et cetera, you know, that's that deterrents by denial, trying to, trying to make the costs so high that they don't want to do it. And I think that's a better fit for cyber to try to figure out how can we raise the cost to the adversary if they operate against our customers against our enterprises and that they'll go someplace else and do something else. >> Well, that's a retaliatory strike, isn't it? I mean, is that what you're saying? >> No, definitely not. >> It's more of reducing their return on investment essentially. >> Yeah. >> And incenting them- disincening them to do X and sending them off somewhere else. >> Right. And threat actors, whether they be criminals or nation states, you know, Bruce Lee had this great quote that was "be like water", right? Like take the path of least resistance, like water will. Threat actors do that too. So, I mean, unless you're super high value target that they absolutely have to get into by any means necessary, then if you become too hard of a target, they're going to move on to somebody that's a little easier. >> Makes sense. Awesome. Really appreciate your, I could, we'd love to have you back. >> Anytime. >> Go deeper. Adam Myers. We're here at Fal.Con 22, Dave Vellante, Dave Nicholson. We'll be right back right after this short break. (bouncy music plays)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering NAB 2017, brought to you by HGST. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we are back at NAB 2017 with a hundred thousand of our favorite friends doing everything about broadcast media. It's media, it's entertainment, it's technology, it's the M.E.T. effect, which is all the rage here at the show, because you can't really separate the three, they're all tied together. Really excited to be joined by our next guest, who's in the weeds, keeping an eye on this, trying to keep up with all the crazy trends. He's Avi Swerdlow, he's a Manager, Research and Development at the Walt Disney Company. Avi, welcome. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely, so first off, we talked a little bit before we went live, your first time at the show, kind of general impressions of NAB? >> Yeah, it's big, a lot of walking, is my first impression. Aside from the tired feet, it's really exciting to see all the new tech out here. From talking to other people who have been in years past, it seems like things move really fast here. So what you were seeing last year is completely different of what you're seeing this year. But loving all the different sections, everything from hardware to some of the more data-driven stuff. Noticing that a lot more things are moving digital, that a lot of demos are now on laptops instead of physical. >> Right. >> Which is exciting to see. I've been impressed by some of the bigger company, like Microsoft's and IBM's machine learning efforts. And equally impressed by some of the hardware plays at DGI and GoPro, so really, really exciting stuff. >> Yeah, it's really interesting, kind of bifurcation of the market. On one hand, you've got all this crazy high end stuff with 4K and 6K and 8K and ultra HD and all these things and 360 and all these crazy cameras. At the other hand, you've got democratization of distribution with YouTube and Vimeo and all these tools being brought down in a price point, Samsung, 360 camera, where you can be a relatively small content creator and have amazing tools at your disposal. So the opportunities from a creative point of view have probably never been richer. >> Absolutely. I think a lot of what we're trying to focus on is moving in that digital direction for some of our content. Trying to implement some of those lower end or more cost efficient tools and those distribution points to get our content to people faster while at the same time trying to keep up on the higher 4K end. Something that's interesting I've chatted with my colleagues is that things move so fast that it's hard year to year to come here and see all the new things that are completely different from what you saw last year. >> Right, right. >> Now you have to start implementing those things. So I think it's a balance between all of that. I think, given that we're a big media company, some of those lower end tools are really interesting to us. In a sense that, take news for example. It's equally exciting to go live on Facebook video as it is sometimes to do it on a traditional broadcast. So I think learning how we integrate those and integrate those well are some of what we're trying to explore. >> Right. One of the topics we talked about before the cameras turned on was this virtual reality and augmented reality, VR and AR. It is pretty interesting because you talked specifically about data infusion on top of tech. And I remember the first time I ever saw a sports broadcast where, I think it was Fox maybe, that put the score bug on the upper left hand corner. You're like what is that, you're taking valuable real estate. Now we're so accustomed to this multi-layers of data on top of the broadcast. Take like a Bloomberg channel, where some of those things, where now they have multiple feeds that are constantly going. It's a very different way to consume data but that's what people really want these days. >> Absolutely. I think that last year was kind of this year of AR, VR. Where people thought there was going to be this massive revolution all of the sudden where everybody would be, would have headsets and VR would become ubiquitous. I think that will happen eventually, it's probably going to be a slower burn, mostly because people don't have devices yet. I think there's not enough content out there, not enough devices out there. Regardless, I think that if you distill down what AR and VR is at its core, it's the augmentation of information over something else. >> Right. >> So I think a lot of people are now starting to explore, what are the baby steps you take to implement some of that technology into your workflow. Assuming that people don't have devices yet, so I think, when I look at some of the virtual sets that we're seeing around this show and the implementation of information over, let's say, news or sports broadcasts, that becomes really interesting. If you use, we were talking about photogrammetry or volume capture, if you can use some of that and do interesting stuff for instance, if you're looking at a sports game and you're able to create in something like Unity or Unreal, an asset that represents the sports game, it becomes a much easier way to understand what's going on in the game then just a set of numbers. Yes, when you saw that score in the top left hand corner that was exciting. Now imagine seeing a live 3D version of the game same information unfolding, just in a different way. I think those are the baby steps towards this AR, VR implementation and eventually you might get to a point where everybody has a headset but baby steps for the average consumer. >> Right, right. In a lot of conversations about machine learning, you said you're excited about some of the machine learning, you've got the metadata and better metadata around the assets themselves, but now actually getting into the assets at the frame level to do more exploration so that people can, it's the age old adage, find, consume and share-- >> Absolutely. >> The stuff that they're most interested in. There's a lot of new opportunities because of the horsepower of these machines here that we're surrounded by, in terms of the massive capacity, and speed of the storage systems, to do things that you really couldn't do inside the assets themselves. >> Absolutely. I think our problem at somewhere like Disney is unique. It's different than at Google or at Facebook. We're not looking at this huge well of content like YouTube. We're looking at a smaller amount of content and what's really important to us is accurate metadata about our content more so than just having metadata. A lot of what we focus on is definitely metadata extraction but to the extent that we're going to use these machine learning tools we want to have really good training sets and get back really accurate data. So a lot of what we focus on is being able to have a QA layer on top of the machine learning efforts. Being able to use machine learning efforts that can be honed towards one show for instance. >> Right. >> So only extracting a certain set of characters. We really enjoy using these tools and enjoy finding ways that we can apply them to a unique problem which seems to be different than the problem that some of them are trying to address. >> Right. >> But regardless, they're working really well for us. >> So what are some of the use cases, or can you share any of how you're using machine learning to get and score that kind of metadata. >> Yeah. For instance, we're starting to use metadata in some of the ways other people are. Some of the stuff that I can talk about for instance is facial capture, location capture. Things that other people are doing but again, they're unique to one show. For instance, a Quantico on ABC might be something where we have a set of characters that we're looking for. We're starting to use machine learning to look at things like that. >> Interesting. Now Disney obviously, great company, been around forever, huge legacy. I'm just curious to the conversations in the hallway there's just this crazy wave of technology butting up against, we still have to tell great stories. Disney has a long history of telling great stories whether it's through the original animation studios or all the vast properties in which you guys have grown up. Is there still a creative ying and yang there-- >> Absolutely. >> Is there a thread and a rebalancing about technology versus let's not forget what should be-- >> A hundred percent. >> Job one. >> Absolutely. I think that's why I really enjoy working at Disney. It's always story first. My background is actually in creative development in the film industry so I always come at it from a story first point of view. I enjoy that the rest of the company does as well. But if you look at Disney's history, it's always been technology complimenting story. Think about the multi-plane camera in Snow White. The reason Snow White was able to be made was because Disney democratized animation. He figured out the technology that made animation possible at a feature film scale. Without that machine, that would not have been possible. I think in our core history you have these certain technologies that are put to use in the service of story. I think that's pretty much how we approach everything. We're looking for stuff that's going to augment our storytelling efforts. Not replace it, not degrade it in any way but only to enhance it. That's in our legacy. >> Right, right. That's interesting, I've never heard it explained that way but that is so much the trend that we continue to be on today. It's democratization of the data, democratization of the access to the data, democratization of the analytics of the data. And then operating at scale. Which requires, in today's scale, I'm not talking about a two hour movie scale, actually be able to set animation, but massive amounts of data that are flowing through the system. So how do you-- >> Absolutely. We want to use that data to empower our storytellers. To empower anybody at the company to tell better stories. But data management it's tough. I think a lot of what we had to do is first of all put in place the plumbing to make that data easily accessible. To make it easily searchable. To make it correct. To make it authoritative. To get people out of their spreadsheets that you had stored away somewhere. And unify that data so that it starts to tell a story. We've been very successful in those efforts. But it's a massive undertaking because you have companies that have not necessarily thought from a data first point of view and are now realizing that the actual value of this data. So part of what we're doing is extracting that metadata. Doing it in a way that's extremely accurate and authoritative. But also going as far upstream as possible to try to find are there other people that are already collecting this metadata and can we have them put it into a central database as opposed to everybody having their own little corner of data? >> Right, right. Is there an effort to reassess the value of the data? Where before just raw data in and of itself was a liability. Was expensive to store, expensive to keep and there was always trade off decisions about what you keep what you throw away. Now there really is the opportunity to keep it all and there's significant data outside, maybe beyond the box office gate of the feature film with all the various distribution channels and ancillary things. Obviously Disney is way ahead of the curve in terms of licensing and realizing value beyond just the core asset. But are there new ways now that those models are being worked in so that you can justify the additional expense of all this extra metadata and storage and infrastructure which, at the end of the day, you got to pay the bill-- >> Certainly. >> To the data center. >> Absolutely. I think to the extent that we can use our data to tell our stories to gain new insights it is extremely valuable. I think there are efforts around the company to, not necessarily store as much data as possible but to find what data is valuable and where it is. We're finding more and more data that is valuable. Because when you are able to unify it with other data it starts to tell a story. That's both data about our content, about our content performance, about our consumers, that what types of stories we should and shouldn't be telling. I think it's not just taking everything but it's figuring out what data is actually valuable and then trying to derive as much insight as possible from that. >> Right. Alright so, 2017, what are your top priorities for this year? Can't believe we're a third of the way through 2017- >> I know. >> It used to be like a stereo question, I guess it's not an end of the year question anymore. >> I would say one of our main goals is really to advance our automation efforts. I think also to the extent possible to advance our metadata tagging efforts as much as possible. I'd say that's top of mind at the moment. In addition to some other things but that's some of the stuff we're thinking about. >> Alright, great. Well Avi, thanks for-- >> Thank you for having me. >> For taking a few minutes and enjoy your first ever >> Thank you, yeah I will. >> NAB 2017. Alright Avi Swerdlow from Disney. I'm Jeff Frick from theCUBE, you're watching us like from NAB 2017 at the Las Vegas convention center. We'll be back after this short break. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>Live from the Mandalay convention center in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's not cue at IBM insight 2014 >>you're all your hosts. John furrier and Dave Volante.. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. We're here live inside the cube at IBM insight. I'm Sean with Dave Volante. We go after the events, extract the signal and noise. We go wall to wall covers what we do here. I don't, of course we're excited to have awesome gas. We talked to the executives, entrepreneurs, but we get the media stars in here. Uh, Katie Lyndon doll. Welcome to the cube. You are with CNN, the today show. You're the tech correspondent and you get a lot of energy. I could just tell this is going to be fun. It's been fun to hear the last few days. So I mean, Watson is the geeky story of any what, what are you seeing? Let me get the wife in a second. But outside of Watson, what's the coolest thing you've seen? >>I'm constantly on the hunt for the latest innovations in technology and I think that's probably the best part about my job. And always chasing down high level stories. I recently just came back for a dive with NASA. I learned that NASA astronauts actually train underwater to simulate microgravity and I'm like, Oh my gosh, no way. And they're like, do you want to come down to the world's only Marine underwater habitat? I was like, yes, please. So went down to the Florida keys, it's an hour off the coast and was diving literally with NASA European space agency and the Canadian space agency underwater. And again, it's the world's only underwater Marine habitat and seeing how they train in everything from asteroid mining to um, underwater surgery to actually seeing how the body responds to exercise. I guess water simulates one sixth of gravity. So it was a pretty dynamic shoot. >>I was doing that for NBC news and it's just I, those are the types of stories. I, I am a diver. I actually was doing a story on big data last year and it required me to get my dive certs and the Island of Bermuda feel very bad. It was a presentation that I was speaking on here at insight a, there was all this crowdsourced information about how the lion fish, if you've ever heard of the lion fish has been, it's an invasion in the Atlantic ocean. I took all of this information and metrics and made a story for CNN and it required me to get my advanced dive certs. So now I'm getting all these dive stories cause there's not a lot of us dive reporters. So the lion fish story for CNN too. Another good example of a piece that I go after. >>So you, you bring a lot of energy. What do you see here? I mean you see a lot of stories and you get pitched stories. I can imagine that your email box flux, I mean it's like, Oh >>I have 78,000 unread emails right now. I'm not proud of that. But yes, constantly being pitched. >>I had 40,000 I'm a little bit blind. I'm going to give that to you in the today show. Not too shabby. But what do you do? You get pitched all the time and so you got the vet stories. What's your formula for vetting stories? I mean, what gets your attention and how do you go outside your comfort zone to select good stories? What your attention. It's funny, >>you know, so I've been in television for the last 10 years and I feel like now I have this internal barometer and knowing when something's very good and the scope of the things that I cover from, you know, in the past month alone when I was talking about the NASA piece and then I'll flip the next day and do top Halloween gadgets on today's show. So it's, it's very vast, but I can instantly tell and it's, it's come through experience and being in a background in technology and knowing what's gonna work for the consumer and knowing a hot product. When I see it and I I T I gotten pretty good I think at it spotting a product that a consumer is going to love but also finding a story that is, maybe it's super nerdy, but my job is to take it and to bring it down to a level that's entertaining for any kind of audience, whether it be CNN or whether it be today. >>So it says your Guinness book of world record holder, share that in little nugget with the folks in. Yes, that is a true story. I have a Guinness world record holder in the most high fives and one minute. Okay, so this probably solicit some like how the heck did that happen? I've always been fascinated with Guinness world records and I always wanted one and I've always been obsessed with a high five like I am paranoid of huggers, there's nothing that scares me more or good high five just go for the five. I don't want to bring it in and okay, it's a little OCD. I will completely aware. So anyways, I found that this Guinness world record was held by a clown in England for the most high fives and one minute. So I convinced I was hosting a show on spike TV and I convinced them to allow me to break this record. >>So we had all these people line up in the MTV cafeteria and you have a Guinness world record adjudicator come onsite, you get two tries and if you win you get a plaque in a formal ceremony. The cube before we should do the most consecutive interviews to having a drink of water. We want to just come here and we could break something able to break something or like you said, it's his official. Yeah, we started to get like real nervous and like hot and yeah, so I had two tribes. Oh I was, I was giving him a big ass big fitness person. So I was like ready. And if clown beats me at this point, it's over your careers. division. You'll never work again because I beat it on the first try and then I advanced it on a single hand or you go, there's a whole process as you can imagine with the adjudicator's she's like real intense. >>She's like counting with her clicker on the high five so I go down this line of people and it has to be over there can't be like a mailed in like you know like a high five you go for the five names and then I got a couple that were disqualified, you know like a couple didn't count because it wasn't like a full on five four so like a film replay. Super slow motion. I like argued a few. I was like no, I was for sure up on that one. The flag, it was sponsored by PRL. It wasn't but it should have been but it was fun. So I have a plaque how many? 107 heard rumors that it's been broken but I didn't care as long as I've got a plan to that plan at one point. Okay. Let's cut to about IBM because Watson is the coolest thing I'll say is pretty mainstream. >>It hits your wheelhouse. I'll see for the day I've seen jeopardy. Absolutely. Now how does that translate into a story for sure. Stuff going on here. What do you, so what's very cool about Watson? I called my boyfriend because I've had a relationship with him now over the last few years, a few years ago on CVS. I actually got to challenge Watson on a full game of jeopardy and I think that was of course the most, the most memorable part of Watson when he took on the two, you know, jeopardy champions. But so this is like a lifetime moment for me. I got a full game of jeopardy, me Watson and another individual smoked me and actually I was doing okay and then it was like tennis vocab. I was like, Oh, I got this. You know, like I've been in sports my whole life. I've been worked at ESPN for seven years. >>I got this in the bag, I was doing good. And then they were like, Oh, we had them on the low setting. I was like, all right, really? Like really? Like I was just feeling good about myself. I finished with $2, two bucks. Um, and I thought it was so cool how gimmicky it was, you know, in a healthy beach in the tennis category. Oh, you smoking, you never in the low setting for sure. I got a few of those, a few. I actually got set in Tennessee vocab. You're going to have it right. Even watching tennis your whole life. Right. ESPN is embarrassing and disappointing. And then I weighed you too much and then the double jeopardy. Anyways, I digress. So how cool is it that I got to play Watson but then now years later seeing the power in it in many different developments and most notably I work over at as a volunteer at Sloan Memorial Kettering cancer center for a small group called Candlelighters that works with individuals that come in from around the world for cancer treatments. >>Now Sloan is one of those powerful cancer centers in the world is actually using it as predictive analysis. So here and I work with these kids and I, it's very complex. When they go in for a diagnosis, there's lots of different problems that they have and really it's, it's, it's, it's, it's guesswork for a doctor now. They can put all of these things that are happening with it, with a child into a machine, and they can pump out a hypotheses. Of course, you're going to have to have the human interaction tailored with that to have the emotional side, but I had been fascinated, especially on the medical side, watching your boyfriend at this point. That's interesting. We'll get that to the world of Facebook. It's complicated. I heard rumors that he's talks back and we'll listen to this a true statement. He's a lot smarter than I am. >>I'm intimidated by that, but what's the coolest demo with Watson that you've seen besides jeopardy? Yeah, that would have, well I actually learned something new from a few developers that I met yesterday about the new chef app. So being able to go into your pantry and to do some recipe from what you have, the ingredients you have insider, I think that's a little more consumer friendly. So I was kind of like, um, I'm excited to check that one out. Looking at the tech landscape, what are you most excited about? I mean, what's the coolest kind of consumer meats like gadget, short door, tech cloud. If you could pull a few favorites at what's, what's drawing your attention? Uh, one that we actually had here that's probably popped into mind. There's so many to choose from, but in the world of Oculus rift, and the reason I say that is not for the gaming aspect, but more for the potential in the landscape of physical therapy. >>The first time I got on Oculus raft, I was actually training on a Navy boat and I was doing a segment where all my camera men were all around me. I lost track of reality and I got so immersed into virtual reality and being there and even as a huge diver, I get very motion sick and I got motion sick on the boat. Being in this physical, this augmented reality world, we're actually shooting this at the birthplace of Oculus rift. So we really diving behind the scenes into the actual, uh, software and hardware and it was such a cool, immersive experience and realize that what this could do for physical therapy or even at the dentist at a lower end, I think the capabilities for augmented reality and taking yourself out of that moment are huge. So I think that's very exciting. How about drones? >>Oh my gosh. So yes, let's talk to, and my nephew the other day and he said, do you want to see the drone that I built? And I said, yeah, it's got this four or five quadcopter. It's a quadcopter. Yup. I said, where'd you get the software for? He goes, I'll download it. It's all open source. I hacked it a little bit. I actually have several drones. Okay. Nominal. Because this blew me away. I probably have what I consider is the best prosumer drone. It's a DGI Phantom, a DJI Phantom two and I have got some incredible aerial footage over the mountains of Montana and also over a Bermuda, the Island of Bermuda. I sent it up, put it over a shipwreck, gorgeous. And for me as a flake, being in photo and video and going out and getting my own video and not having to rely on a cop, a copter for, you know, that would be thousands of dollars worth of footage or relying on a cameraman. >>I just sent that baby up. I'm like, please don't hit anybody. It's a little hard to operate when you get the one, the higher end models. I have a couple of the parents too. There are a lot easier to operate and do it right from my iPhone, but I am just like, I'm so into it now. I think it's a little gimmicky when we talk about Amazon and pizza deliveries and taco deliveries and beer deliveries with a drone shooting surprises. Texas man, what am, I don't know about that. But uh, I think it's fascinating. I think it's a really cool technology. And again, I've personally saved tens and thousands of dollars using my drones. So you, when you flew over these sites yet proximate, so you had visual concepts. So the Phantom Jerome that I have, that's my favorite one. I actually attach a GoPro to it so I can send it up and I use the gyroscope or just kind of move my GoPro around in mid air. It goes hundreds of feet high. I mean, you've really got to get a grasp on it and know what you're doing. I had it out in a field well before I took it out to an Island on a beach. But I'm not, a drive is not something you really, it's not a remote control car. Now did you build it? Oh no. Goodness. Aww, that's totally on the market. Yeah, I got it at B and H photo >>sending them out. So in San Francisco off their balconies and then they're going out to, you know, angel Island, Alcatraz, and literally they're flying out then unregulated. It's like someday there'll be drone collisions, let's say this is unregulated. This is a huge, people are geeking out with the drones. It's super exciting. Dave camera's shooting down him sending him into football venues or you know, the world series delivering packages. But mom's a streaker. I mean Amazon. I like that. Okay. So what else is new for you? Tell us more about some, some cool behind the scenes at a today's show. Any sad night live, uh, opportunities for you next been >>to Saturday night live. Oh my gosh. By the way, that's like the hottest ticket in New York to get. I've had the opportunity to go to two shows cause my friend's a cameraman over there. The rehearsal for it is like amazing. I know that's a huge digression, but talking about something to see in person, that's one of my bucket lists. Phenomenal. Yeah. Phenomenal. What else is new in New York and the scene there? Uh, Oh, we constantly covering a lot of different pieces. Uh, one, I just came back from Africa a little bit ago. I was doing a number of pieces over there from an elephant orphanage to one of my favorite pieces that we'll be rolling out soon. I did it for cnn.com and also working on a video piece of it. I went in embedded myself in the second poorest part of the entire world in the slums of Kibera, Kenya, and it was amazing to see that in these very poor areas, 70 to 80% cell penetration. A lot of people don't think that a smartphone would be prevalent. It sure is. And these kids, yeah, absolutely. There's cell towers everywhere. These kids were, you know, they don't have much, but they have e-reader devices and they can have thousands of books when they're walking 10 miles to school. You walk into the school that doesn't have any electricity, it's a hundred degrees, but they all have e-readers, Kindles right on their desk. I was blown away. I went to several different schools around Eastern Kenya. Fascinating story to be able to cover. So >>yeah, that's a really good point. In mobile penetration. If I was talking to this startup that where their business plan is to build, sell a solar battery recharging stations because they have the exact points, like they have all these devices but it's not, they don't have the traditional electricity and the parks >>one outlet in the entire school. So fortunately for, you know, with wifi off it's about a week charge on a Kindle. So it is, >>yeah, I think, I think that's a great market opportunity. Certainly in emerging countries, the mobile penetration, I'm so suites about the IBM show here. Is this your first time here or, >>I have had the luxury and the opportunity to be a part of several IBM events and everyone is so uniquely different. And this one all about developers obviously. So something I get to nerd out in myself in that is an it girl and also a developer. It's fun to be able to learn. I picked up so much new information so I just kind of like, they're like, you can, you're done with, I'm like, I'm going to hang out for a little bit longer. >>You know, you know you're a, you know, you're a geek when you're geeking out, when you're off the clock, you know Steve and I the same way. We're like we should stop rookies now let's keep going. So CES, UFC, yes, >>yes, every year for sure. And for anyone that hasn't been to CF, it's kind of on the bucket list for anybody that's attending technology, 35 football fields full of gadgets. Amazing. Yeah, it's always one of my biggest times of the year. So we'll be back here. >>now do you enjoy CES or is it a hard slog for you because you must have to really get down and dirty for CS, I mean a lot of stuff to cover. >>I did and I tried to make it to like the most random boosts. I find someone of my best technology products and like the ma and PA type shops that don't have the million dollar booth and like you know that are really back in a corner and I'm like zero in, >>you go on to cover, by the way, do you go into cover? You kind of sneak in there and you go into the camera guys. No, I go for it. You go for it. Okay. Time. Okay. All right guys. Um, that's awesome. Well can. Thanks for coming on the cube. We really appreciate spending the time. We'd love the personality. I love the energy. I mean Dave and I think you know, we're, first of all we're huge fans of your work. Especially the ESPN part. No, we're, we're big sports fans. In fact we call this the ESPN of tech cause it's our kind of version of like trying to be like ESPN. But we think technology is going mainstream. People at this new generation are geeks and even too, you alluded to ESPN, even sports and technology, I can't tell you how many pieces I've covered in pro athletes and how tech is entering in that space. Everywhere. Disruption in the data, the social media, you know, limiting have agents that go direct to the audience. Just super exciting. I mean I'm real big fan of media, tech, sports and entertainment. Thanks for coming on the cube. We appreciate it. We'll be right back with this after the short break here inside the cube live in Las Vegas. I'm John and Dave. We write back.