Tech, Privacy, and Liberty: Unpacking the Future with Sean Patrick Tario

Join us on this episode of Faithful Politics as we welcome Sean Patrick Tario, an innovative entrepreneur deeply invested in the realms of technology, privacy, and community empowerment. Sean is the visionary founder behind Open Spectrum Inc., a consultancy offering indispensable insights into the data center industry, and a driving force at mark37.com, which focuses on curating products and services fostering a sovereign lifestyle. Additionally, he co-founded Intelligence On Demand, a dedicated team combating misinformation, illustrating his commitment to decentralization, privacy, and the power of technology to uplift communities.

Throughout the episode, Sean shares his journey from the North Shore of Chicago to the heart of Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom, eventually settling in the vibrant community of Santa Cruz, California. His story is a testament to following one's passion and the pursuit of knowledge, underscored by his involvement in the Ron Paul campaign and his lifelong mission to educate on the intricacies of economics, politics, and the true nature of money.

Sean's insights are particularly resonant in today's digital age, where he raises critical discussions around privacy, the surveillance state, and the overarching influence of big tech. His perspective challenges us to consider the impact of our digital footprints and the importance of reclaiming control over our personal data.

This conversation is not just about technology; it's a deep dive into the implications of our digital lives on our real-world freedoms and the steps we can take to safeguard our privacy. Whether you're a tech enthusiast, concerned citizen, or someone curious about the intersections of technology and society, Sean's message is both enlightening and urgent.

Guest Bio:
Sean is a seasoned IT professional, entrepreneur, author and investor. He has worked over the years with hundreds of startups and scaling companies as a general advisor, director, consultant, professional trainer and award winning sales producer. He has produced dozens of high impact sales and data center marketplace training events across the country and negotiated hundreds of data center and hosting contracts with service providers around the world. Sean also spends his time serving as an industry advocate through his work with the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (I2C) in Washington DC as well the North Carolina Board of Science, Technology and Innovation (NCBSTI),  InfraGard and the North Carolina District Export Council (NCDEC) in Raleigh, North Carolina.

"The Faith Roundtable" is a captivating spinoff from the Faithful Politics podcast, dedicated to exploring the crucial issues facing the church in America today. Hosted by Josh Burtram, this podcast brings together faith leaders, theologians, and scholars for deep, respectful discussions on topics at the heart of American Christianity. From the intersection of faith and public life to urgent matters such as social justice and community engagement, each episode offers insightful conversations

Transcript

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Well, hello, faithful politics listeners. And if you're joining us on YouTube, our viewers, thanks for coming and being with us today. We're excited to welcome on to the show today, Sean Patrick Theriault, to our podcast. Sean's an innovative entrepreneur and a passionate community builder. He's founded Open Spectrum Incorporated, a consulting firm that offers crucial insights in the data industry, data center industry, rather. He's also driving force behind mark37.com, which curates products and services for a sovereign lifestyle and a co-founder of Intelligence On Demand, a team dedicated to combating misinformation. Sean's work reflects his deep commitment to decentralization, privacy and empowering communities through technology. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for being with us here, Sean, and I hope I pronounced your last name correctly. It's...yeah. Yep. But most of our last names are all bastardized over the years, right? So I mean, it used to be T -H -E -R -I -A-U -L -T, French, the French way of spelling it. There you go. I mean, mine, yeah, mine was Bertram and it began as Buttram. So think about that one for a little bit, dude. That's how it was in the old English. So anyway, hey, man. So thanks for joining us today. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I know I gave a brief bio there, but kind of talk to us a little bit about yourself and what's what's gotten you to where you are today, where you're so interested in decentralization, privacy in empowering communities through technology. Yeah, so I'm born and raised in North Shore of Chicago. If you've seen the movie Home Alone, a Risky Business, that's basically where I grew up. Spent most of my teenage years there, ended up having an opportunity to go to California for university in the Bay Area during the peak of the boom in 98. So I was at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, right in Silicon Valley from 98 to 02. and then I effectively moved to the beach from there coming from Chicago. I figured if I'm going to be living in California, I want to live on the beach. So I moved to Santa Cruz, California, which if anyone has ever known or been around Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz is like the hippiest of the hippies live in Santa Cruz. I think you guys are near North Carolina, right? You're in Virginia. So not too far from Asheville. Asheville is basically considered the Santa Cruz of the East coast. So I spent a lot of time with some very free thinking, open minded, you know, crazy hippies, libertarians. In fact, I got very involved in politics around the Ron Paul campaign. So that's really where I started digging into how the sausage is made in DC, even though I was an econ polysci double major. But I've been following the money my whole life and really trying to teach people and educate people on. you money, what is currency, what has value. I was very grateful and thankful to have a father who started sitting me down at an early age and starting to teach me these things and made me read. Have you guys ever heard of the book or watched the series The Creature from Jekyll Island? No. heaven. highly recommend it. It's all about the history of money, the history of currency, the Federal Reserve Bank, and really just educating people on how our monetary system became what it is today. It's essential learning, I think, for all humans, let alone citizens. I think you guys would greatly appreciate digging into that. But long story short, as a result of that, I've been called a conspiracy theorist my whole life. And so I've thankfully been proven correct on pretty much everything. that has played out over the last couple months and years. We have the World Economic Forum. I don't know if you guys have heard of the World Economic Forum. So out in Davos, they're all openly speaking about globalization, openly speaking about the destruction of states, openly speaking about depopulation, all these things that I've been trying to, central bank digital currencies, the... social credit scores, like all of these things that they are now openly saying we want this, we need this, we're gonna be working towards this, is what I've been trying to warn people about for decades and now it's all starting to play out. So for better or worse, it is what it is. But for me, I've been in the IT industry my whole life and I've followed the money, saw that all the money was coming from these same people that are in Davos, are the ones funding the venture capital and the private equity firms that are funding. the technology companies. And so I realized what was going on and started really realizing after 9 -11, if you can imagine this, I actually read the Patriot Act. Very few people have actually read this document, but it is a absolutely terrifying document if you read it, because what it does is it essentially gives carte blanche to our military and to our government to spy on its own citizens under the guise of national security. So when this came out, I was warning all of my friends and family that this was going to be leveraged against the American people. And they said, that'll never happen. This is just going to be used for the very specific use case of these terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and wherever, Syria, Russia. And I said, no, all this does is give legal cover for what our intelligence agencies have already been doing, basically stripping away our privacy through data collection. And I lived through that in Silicon Valley. So if you went into a VC meeting or a private equity meeting and you didn't have a data story to your pitch, you were not getting funding. You had to in some way incorporate how you're going to be aggregating and pulling data from your customers in order to get funding because they knew how valuable that data was going to be. So here we are in, you know, what is it, 2024. in a dynamic where the surveillance state is everywhere. This is not a left or right or a conservative or liberal topic. This is a simple reality. Your device that you carry around in your pocket is listening to you all day every day. Everyone knows it. This is not like, no, that's not, no, it is. Everyone knows it is because they talk about something and then they see ads for it. And they're like, how the heck did that happen? So the simple question is, how do you feel about that? And literally, 90 plus percent of the people that I asked that question to, again, doesn't matter what political spectrum you are, they're not a fan. They're not, they don't like it, right? So the real question is, so what can we do about it? So I spend my time traveling the country, educating and training organizations and groups and individuals on the reality of all the different ways that big tech has gone about invading our lives, infiltrating our lives, making it so that things are so convenient. that were oblivious to exactly all the ways that they're sucking and pulling our data and then walking people through, well, what can we do about it? How can we get these companies out of our way? You know, that's really cool. I have a friend in Washington state who will love everything that you just said. He's an old army buddy of mine. And he was really reluctant to get like a smartphone for years and years, you know, and anybody kind of part of the military will have like a little clique of military friends. And there's always like the one person that, you know, says some really weird stuff and you're just like, okay, that's Johnny or whatever. But then it's like, you see all these things actually come to fruition and be like, man, maybe Johnny was right all along. He was way ahead of us. I was thinking about this going into this interview, the amount of data that's available to Josh and I. just as a result of having a podcast, like we, from our hosting provider to YouTube, is almost scary. Like, we're not smart enough to know what to do with it, to market, you know, in a way that makes sense, but like big businesses, like are smart enough to know how to market and use that data. So like, how can one, how can one protect their data? Or is that even possible? Yeah they totally can. So it's just a matter of how much data are you putting out there. So think of it in this perspective. Facebook Google Microsoft Amazon all these big tech companies Apple they're constantly harvesting and collecting data. So if you're using a Google operating system if you're using an Apple operating system Microsoft Windows operating system Amazon operating system if you're using Alexa if you're using Siri right. You're constantly feeding. data and these devices are just data harvesting machines. That's what they're intended to do. That's why they want you to continue to buy newer, newer things, right? It's not because of the marginal tiny little difference in the picture quality, right? It's because they've added more processing power, they've added more RAM, more CPU, so they can harvest more data, they can process that data on the device that you're paying them for before it gets shipped off into their cloud environment. you So we all have our own profiles that are sitting in this cloud that all these companies share and there's a dollar amount that's tagged to your profile, each one of your profiles, based on your demographics, where you went to school, what your income bracket is, where you live, yada, yada, yada, right? So the more data you feed into this Borg system, the more value is gonna be attached to your profile, right? So from a marketing perspective, that makes perfect sense. It's brilliant, right? But here's where the scary part comes in. It's when we start to realize that this is psychological warfare. Because you can use the reality that if I know what someone's buying, I know where they're going, where they've been, I know their friends, I know how they communicate with their friends, the language that they use, I know what's triggering them, I can then start to shape a narrative that I want them... to believe. So by pushing information or withholding information, you can start to shape the minds of the masses. And this is what our government has been doing, not just overseas in other countries to manipulate elections and whatnot, but it's what they're doing in this our own country. So if I'm a global corporation, and I could care less about nation states, right, and I simply want people to move in a certain direction, I can certainly use that data because I can say I want to go after this specific demographic. I want every African American male between the age of 40 and 50 years old who makes between 200 and $400 ,000 that has at least two kids, you can narrow it down. They say, okay, that's about 25 ,000 people, whatever it might be. And your cost to address that population is gonna be X, right? And they don't care what you're gonna push to them. They do not care what you're going to push to them. You can be sending text messages to that population. You could be doing ads on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or whatever it is. They don't care. So for people to think, well, this information is only going to be used for marketing purposes. It's not going to be used to try to influence an election or try to influence the popular opinion in any perspective. Like you're living with your head buried in the sand. You're living in some kind of clown world universe. Right. Right. 100%. So for us, I decided I'm not okay with that and I need to do something about it and people need to do something about it. And it's really pretty simple. Have you guys heard of Linux? So Linux is an open source operating system for laptops and desktops. What Linux does is it gives you control of your device. You no longer have Microsoft, you no longer have Apple running your device on the backend. performing updates whenever it wants, reinstalling applications that you may have deleted, turning on certain settings that you may have turned off, doing things that you have no idea what it's doing because it lives in a closed source code environment. That means you can't see the code, right? In an open source environment, everybody has access to the code. It's like having the full blueprints to your house and you're giving it to everybody and you're saying, Where is there a threat in my house? Can someone come in underground? Can someone come in through a window? And if that's the case and I need to patch that, I can create a patch and then I can push that out to the whole environment and say, does this patch make sense? Is this gonna solve the problem? And the community can say yes or no or whatever. Hey, you also left out, by patching it this way, now someone else can come in through another route, right? So with an open source environment, you know if something's been fixed or not. and you have a community of people that have eyeballs on it. In a closed source environment, to your point about trust, you're supposed to just trust Microsoft, or trust Apple, or trust Google. don't worry about it, we've taken care of it. Shouldn't be a concern of yours anymore. But what I learned in technology, working in Silicon Valley, working in DC, having had conversations with intelligence folks, is that for national security reasons, every one of these major technology companies have provided backdoor access to those environments. And that is in part why these environments are kept closed source, because they don't want companies and individuals and organizations to know exactly how they're accessing your devices. So from a comms perspective, Will, you said you were in the military, right? Coms is absolutely imperative in military. You have to protect and control your coms, 100%. If I have control of my enemy's coms, where I have access to my enemy's coms, do I tell the enemy, hey guys, I've got access to your coms? No, you keep your mouth shut. You want them to be as ignorant about the fact that you have full access and control of their coms as possible. Because then you see what they see, you hear what they hear, right? That's exactly what's playing out. So we have these three letter agencies and these big global corporations that have full access to all of our comms all the time. And they've kept people completely ignorant about that fact. And it's no wonder why those who are fighting for sovereignty and people who are fighting for digital freedom and privacy or election integrity or whatever it might be, why it is that the enemy knows what's happening before it's happening. because they continue to use these devices that are controlled by the enemy. So Josh and Will, simple question that I have for you guys. If we're at war, right? I believe that we're at war right now, but whatever. If we're at war, right? And I give you a weapon, and I say just so you know, there's a GPS tracking device on this, there's a camera and a microphone. All of that information from that is actually being fed to the enemy. And I'm not gonna explain to you how to use this weapon. I'm just gonna tell you if you pull this trigger, it shoots, it fires, you know. That's all I'm gonna tell you. Would you use that weapon in combat? I mean, do I have access to another weapon? I've got some follow -ups. I've got some follow -up questions. you wanna find access to another weapon, right? Because you're just walking into a losing battle if they know exactly where you are. And by the way, they can turn that weapon on and off at will, right? And via that weapon, they know all the other weapons that are connected near you and around you, right? Like, that's exactly what this is. This is a psychological warfare weapon that they have spent trillions of dollars, inventing and investing in to control the population. And it's not just companies, because as you guys probably know, the DOD and DARPA have put a lot of money into these companies and into these businesses helping to develop this technology to figure out how they can influence people through this tech. So that's the paradigm that we live in today. And My whole shtick is we just need to get educated and informed and be aware of this because the more they encroach across this line and get into everything in our lives, we will be in, and I think we're already, excuse me, we're already in a 1984, you know, the book 1984 State, where they have, you know, Big Brother is living on the wall and they say, well, you have to have this in your house. for national security reasons, and we're only gonna use it to push out updates from the president, or only gonna push out national news that is relevant for you, with the reality that we know that it's looking and listening and spying all the time, so that if you violate wrong think, you get sent off to the authorities. That's where we're going. That's exactly how things play out in North Korea, that's exactly how things play out in China, and in other. communist countries around the world that have this level of sophistication. And for me, I don't want to live in that paradigm. Do you guys want to live in that paradigm? Now, I'm curious, two questions actually. Maybe you can talk to us about your cell phone. Is your cell phone different than ours? Yes. So the only difference is that this phone runs a open source operating system called Graphene OS. It is the most private and secure open source mobile operating system on the market today. So what this does is every application that is downloaded onto this device, I can download Facebook if I want. People always ask, well, what about this app? What about that app? You can use any app. The difference is when I download that app and I click, I'm OK with the user terms of service. I'm instantly going to start to get notifications from this phone that says this application wants access to your GPS, wants access to your contacts, wants access to whatever. So if I download a flashlight app and it starts spitting off, hey, this flashlight app wants access to your contacts, wants access to your GPS, I can be like, nope, I don't want to give that information to this flashlight app. Versus what happens now when you download that free app. And you click, yep, okay, okay. No one reads the terms of service. They don't realize that when they clicked okay, they just gave that app full access to their device. It now knows everything that's going on, knows all different applications you're using, when you're using them, and it just starts sucking all that data and pushing it out because that's how these companies make their money. So you now gain control and access to everything happening on that device. Apple's not involved, Google's not involved, Microsoft's not involved. Any of these big tech companies are not involved. But if you want them to be involved, that's your choice. I can download Google Maps, the app Google Maps, and then I can give Google Maps full access to my GPS and all this information. I can choose to do that if I want to. Now what I coach people about is there's other ways to use these applications on your mobile devices that doesn't involve you downloading the application. You can use Google Maps through a browser. You can do it using a VPN. You can use it VPN through your browser in a private session so that Google has no idea who you are and who's actually accessing that application through the browser, which is what I do every now and again when I have to. But there's other tools that are out there. Have you guys heard of the company Garmin? So really cool company Garmin. Garmin is a mapping company. A lot of people use it when they're backpacking, going on trips and whatnot. But what's cool about Garmin, they've always had a philosophy that everything you're doing is on the device. And they've wanted it that way because they knew that some of their customers who are going to be out in remote locations are still going to need to be able to navigate without access to data, a data plan or a data connection. So everything happens on the device. You type in a location, it routes you. That routing isn't happening in a cloud. where they then know where you're going and where you've been and try to sell you things along the way, it happens on the device. So that data is stored on the device, kept on the device. It's not fed to anybody else. So that's just a shift in mentality in think, which is not what's your data strategy. It's how do we protect and keep that data sovereign to you and protected for you, right? Not in a cloud somewhere else owned by people that are gonna use that data to try to harm us. Yeah. So, so my, the, the, the second question I had was, was about TikTok. I hear a lot of talk about, you know, TikTok, the dangers of TikTok. my wife uses TikTok. I don't use TikTok. Although we have a TikTok for this, for this podcast, but I don't manage it. Josh does. So that's all his data. So tell me about TikTok and why is it so bad? So I would not say that TikTok is so bad. I would say that it is doing nothing different than what Facebook is doing, what Instagram is doing, what WhatsApp is doing, what any of these other applications are doing. I think part of what is happening, and I've been saying this for a long time, they're going after social media companies and platforms. They're trying to stigmatize them as being bastions of wrong think and that we can't have these applications available to the general public because it's not safe. Right. That gives them the latitude to then be able to control what is and is not on all of these applications. Right. Control the content that is is not allowed on all these applications. So for me this is the government trying to once again trying to create a creative maneuver to try to create legislation that gives them the authority to now say what content is and is not allowed on the Internet. Right. That's not okay. This is all going towards a digital ID system. The entire end game here, the Hegelian dialectic, if you guys are familiar with that, right? You create the problem already knowing what the solution is that you're gonna steer people towards, right? They're creating this problem of TikTok saying, this is a Chinese -owned company and that they're harvesting your data and this is being used against you. All the other companies are doing it. They're doing the exact same thing, right? So they're using this as a means to try to say, well, Now we need to control, you cannot be anonymous online. You cannot have an account anywhere online unless we know exactly who you are, because if you push out any nefarious activity, we want to know exactly who did it and where you were so that we can find you and hold you accountable. That's where this is all leading toward, which is also leading towards the social credit score system. That's where it's all leading towards, folks. man, this is all like, it's like drinking through a fire hose. And I'm so fascinated by it. And I really appreciate one, your passion, two, your knowledge ability on everything. I think one of my questions is you had mentioned like follow the money. How is it that someone like me, like I have a MacBook Pro, I'm using their iOS system or their OS, you know, whatever the version is now system. How can I take this? hardware that I have and how can I follow the money? How can I figure it out? Is it possible or do I have to trust experts like you that can tell me that this is happening? How can I verify it, if that makes sense? So, follow the money is pretty straightforward, right? So Apple is a publicly traded company. You can just do the research on the company. Who are the investors in Apple? Right? Well, who are the investors in Apple and Microsoft and Intel and AMD and all these big tech companies, right? Well, funny enough, or not surprisingly for some of us who have been doing this type of research, State Street, Vanguard, Berkshire, Hathaway, BlackRock, right? There's only a handful of big equity investors. that have board seats and controlling interest in all of these companies. And it's not just tech, right? It's not just tech, it's healthcare, it's our food, it's our cosmetics, it's everything that we are consuming, our own and controlled by very few people. And again, this is not conspiracy theory. You can just do the research. And like I said, you know, Will earlier, I'm just spitting facts. You just do the research and you'll see. who actually owns and controls these companies. And it's the same groups of people. So then you have to ask yourself, well, what is the ethos of the people that own these companies? Well, I've heard the ethos of these people because they're the ones sponsoring and attending the things like the Bilderberger Group, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and other organizations that are very transparent about what they're trying to manifest and what they're trying to create. And it is a totalitarian, state environment that is, you know, that's not the world I want to live in. But that's the world that those who have full control and board seats that control these businesses across the board. So you can't look at like, well the CEO is this guy and he thinks this way. Well the CEO is a stooge. In most cases he's just a pawn at the company. He does whatever his board tells him to do so he doesn't lose his job, right? He might be a great guy and I hear this all the time. Well so and so is a great guy, right? It's like many politicians. This politician is a great guy. I'm sure he's a great guy. I'm sure he kisses babies really great, right? But does he vote in accordance with your ideals? 90 % of the time when you do the research and look at the data, the person who's a great guy who goes to your church isn't voting the way that he said he was gonna vote. And they bank on the fact that you're not doing your homework and you're not doing your research, which is the same with these corporations. So as a Christian conservative, like this is where I come from, I go insane when I hear people talking about, well we have to boycott Bud Light. We have to boycott Target, we have to boycott Liberty Safes, we have to boycott Ben & Jerry's. I'm like, why are we not talking about boycotting Big Tech when they are exponentially more responsible for the paradigm that we live in today? Exponentially more responsible, to the tune of trillions of dollars more. We're talking about boycotting, why are the talking heads in our movement not having this conversation? It's either because they're ignorant, they're uninformed, or they are aware, they just want to shut up about it because they don't want to be deplatformed. Because if they're deplatformed, they'll lose their monetary streams. But you guys are Christians, right? So, simple question, right? If we're Christians, and Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, is for me, right? Do I serve money, or do I serve God? I serve God. Right? So for me it's a very simple equation because I've been down this road, I was in a lucrative career doing what I was doing, making a lot of money, but the Lord made it very clear to me, and they said, Sean, this is your mission now. You have to go educate and train people and use all the experiences that I've given you and the knowledge that I've given you to start waking people up. so that they start making better decisions because our dollars is our ammunition in this war. And if we are called to be angels and saints, which we are called to be, Christ calls us to be angels and saints. And we're saying, sorry God, I can't do what you've called me to do, speaking truth and love to my friends and family and everyone else around me in business, doesn't matter where, because I'm afraid I might get deplatformed, I might lose my job, I might whatever, right? then you're specifically saying that the Lord of Lords, our God of Gods, who moves mountains and raises the dead is not more powerful than manna. That is what you are saying by your behavior. So I'm livid, obviously, because I have this conversation every single day with pastors and Christians who have excuses as to why they continue to serve manna and money and these false idols and not Christ the King. You know, what's interesting is like how... I want to make sure I phrase this correctly, because it is something that I think about. I'm not doubting one bit that our data is being used in ways that aren't necessarily beneficial to anybody. My question is, I'm a dad. I've got a job. I've got kids. I got one with some pretty severe medical issues. I don't necessarily spend much time thinking about how my data is being used, because I'm just like, man, I just got all these other things to kind of... be focused on. So like, can you make an argument for why I should care and how that data could potentially be used against me, even without my knowledge? So it's already being used against you, is what my point has been, right? Why you think what you think and believe what you believe. In large part, if you're on these devices on a regular basis, using Google for search, using Microsoft Bing for search, using any of Apple's tools for search, they are literally crafting the message. We go to these tools and we put them on this pedestal as being this authority for knowledge, right? when that knowledge is literally being manipulated. And you guys probably saw the news last week, there's a big hoop to do about Google's AI image generation system, and it was clearly skewing things in a certain way. This is how all these systems work. They're controlling narrative, right? So once you start to realize, Will, that maybe a lot of the things that I believe to be true may not actually be rooted in truth, but rooted in a narrative that I've been sold and pushed to me over the last God knows how many years because I truly believe the vast majority of what we've been taught, even in school, having gone through public school is a lie, is a joke, and it's been all leading towards pushing at a specific agenda throughout this whole period. And if you look at following the money of who started our education system, who started our CDC system, who started our National Institute of Health system, These are moneyed interests that had a very specific agenda. You just have to do the homework and do the research. So for me, Will, the line in the sand has to be crossed for certain people in different places. For COVID, like I don't know where you guys stood on COVID, but from day one, I knew that this was gonna be a massive cluster. I knew that they were gonna be lying through the teeth. And it blew my mind that in Santa Cruz, California, where I used to live, where people, they were anti -authoritarian. They hated Big Pharma. They hated big government and yet when COVID came out and big pharma and big government were spending hundreds of billions of dollars to push out a narrative that you needed to take this vaccine that was untested and just brand new into the market. They had no idea what was gonna happen and making all these outlandish claims like you wouldn't spread COVID if you got the vaccine. And then they said, 95 % efficacy. well, 90%. well, 85%. well, we don't really know. You still might get COVID. Like making this up. the entire Santa Cruz community just bought it. And I would be like. This doesn't make any sense to me, why? It's because the narrative that they consumed, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and the doctors in that community were just feeding them this information, so that's what they believed to be truth. So we have this paradigm where we have people walking down the street in a major city being yelled at and screamed at for not wearing a mask outdoors, you know, in open air, and saying, you And then you drive 20 minutes south, and this was my reality in Raleigh, North Carolina where I used to live. Drive 20 minutes south, everything's open. Bars are open, they're open until 2 a Restaurants are open, you can walk into a grocery store, no one's screaming and yelling at you, very few people wearing masks, right? So we have this paradigm reality where people are like, well, why should I care? Why is it a big deal? I don't understand. Why don't I just go along and play along and not stir the pot? And then other people are like, wait, I have to think critically over here about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and where I'm feeding. What are my dollars feeding in this process? So for me, again, our dollars are our ammo. I believe that Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, all these companies collectively that make over a trillion dollars a year between these five companies alone are evil companies. I believe that they are part of this global apparatus that is trying to destroy nation states. I believe that they are trying to bring forth a dystopian world view. I believe that they are trying to push a depopulation agenda, not because I'm crazy, but because they tell me that's exactly what they're doing. Because the CEOs of these companies are literally at these events saying, yep, that's what we're trying to accomplish. So, well, if you're okay, giving your data and all of your information and that of your families to people who are literally proactively trying to kill you, that's your decision. That's your choice. You can continue to do that. And you can say, well, Sean, I don't really believe that they're trying to kill me. And I can say, just watch any of the Davos forums, literally, just watch any of them and listen to the people that are on stage who are from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, our FBI, our CIA, all the other intelligence agencies. They're all there being like, yep, yep, that's what we're trying to do. People need to wake up that this is happening, right? We're at war right now with people trying to kill us and we're giving them free rein access to all of our information and all of our data. That's a problem. But that line in the sand for you has to be crossed at some point. And I brought up COVID because for some people it was wearing the mask where they were like, screw that, you're not gonna make me wear a mask. That was the line in the sand. Other people were, well, you have to get the job if you want to continue to work here. And they said, nope, I'm not doing that. That's where people started to wake up and be like, wait a second, can my company do that? Can this business force me to do that? Is this constitutional? you So that line in the sand has to be crossed for you. It may not be crossed yet. You might still be in a place where you're like, eh, no big deal. I don't think these companies are evil. And that's fine for you. I know for a fact that they are. I've met some of these people that work at that level at these companies. I know what they're trying to accomplish. They are generational wealth. They are evil people. And they are trying to cause a depopulation event. And I'm not OK feeding my information, my data into that system. So I have two choices. I can go full Amish. and just fully step away. Or I can figure out how do I best go about building a parallel economy, a parallel system that I can still operate within, I can still do business and commerce, we can still have these types of calls, communicate with people and not have to just step out entirely from the system. will just add that Amish do use electronics. My wife is from Northern Indiana, and she lives right in the heart of Amish country. And I remember the first time I seen some Amish in one of their stores, because they make great furniture. They're on cell phones and computers, and I'm like, what the what? My idea of an Amish was way different. They're like, yeah, as long as they're using it for work, it's OK. They were. into that for that My wife was raised in a night and she's always someone who used technology. But anyway, that's a different show. Yeah, I mean, dude, this is like, I mean, one thing is like, you know, I'm just again, like, taking it in, thinking about, okay, so what does that mean? Again, for me in terms of like, so I would need to if I wanted to get off of, you know, I wanted to be able to continue in my commerce, buying and selling, and being able to get my kids in education, you know, doing the kinds of things that you kind of feel like has, whether it's just been like this is what, they've just defined what a good life is now. And so this is like, hey, you have to have a good life. If you're gonna have a good life, it means you need a college education. It means you need this, this, or this. And so what would my steps be if I'm like, okay, I totally believe... what Patrick's saying, what Sean's saying. What are my next steps to download, download the different operating system and then like, sure, go ahead. So what I'm talking about, digital privacy and security is no different than physical privacy and security. So what do I mean by that? You can't just walk into a karate studio and say, hey, I've got an hour. Can you just sell me something so that I can be a black belt? That's not how it works. You can't just be like, well, I've got an hour. Can you just train me for an hour and then make me a jujitsu master? That's not how it works, right. You have to... I used to train Jujutsu, but anyways, go ahead. So you have to commit to this, right? And it takes some rewiring of your brain and how you think and how you operate and how you do things. You can't, well, you can't train someone to be a jiu -jitsu master overnight. You can't because there's a lot of muscle memory that goes into this, right? It has to be something that you learn over time. You don't, you don't become a master gardener overnight. You don't just buy a raised bed and some seeds and then all of a sudden you're growing your own food and you know, you don't have to go to the grocery store anymore. That's not how that works. It takes time. You have to learn things. You have to learn the process. You have to learn why and how and who and where. You have to learn things. So the first thing is we have to just acknowledge, raise our hand. I don't know if you guys know anyone who's gone through addiction programs or whatnot, I definitely do. But we have to just acknowledge, we're addicted. I'm an addict, I'm addicted, right? I'm addicted to this thing. I have a problem and I'm willing and wanting to take the steps to step away from this addiction, right? Once you make that step and you acknowledge and you admit, okay, let's now surround you with not only some people who can help coach you through the process of which there's a huge community online, if you go to If you go to true social or gab or on Twitter find mark 37 .com Or or Jeffrey Peterson's got a great program. There's so many options that are available right now literally tens of millions of people around the world that are starting to wake up and help each other through this program. So you're not alone, you can find a community to help you through the process. That's one. Two is we provide you the tools. So whether it's the phones or the laptops, you can learn how to do all this yourself. You can learn how to rip Google off of your device and install an open source operating system. You can learn how to rip Mac OS off of your Macbook. You can learn how to rip Windows off of your PC and install Linux and open source operating system. You can learn how to do all this stuff yourself. But in many cases, people don't have that technical acumen, so they would rather someone else just do it for them. So that's where we have tools. You can buy them on our website, you can buy the laptop, you can buy the phone. It's already preloaded with those open source operating systems. It's already preloaded with two dozen apps. that we've vetted that are owned by good people in the same fight as us that are protecting your data and your privacy with those apps. So like a mapping application that does what I told you guys earlier does. Browsers, whatever, VPN tools, all these different tools that we can coach and train you on how to use, but they're already there, ready to go. You don't have to figure it out. So that's an option. But then you have to say, okay, my dad, my 70 some odd year old dad, his threat, vector is different than mine. He stays in one place. He really only uses his computer for research and to talk with his grandkids. Right. Whereas I'm traveling all the time everywhere. And you better believe there are people who don't want me sharing the message that I'm sharing with you right now. So they're trying to shut me up and make my life as difficult as possible. I have a different threat. I need to be trained in different tactics than my dad needs to be trained as a result. Right. So. Josh, you have to figure out where am I in this process and where do I want to start? Where's the foot in the door? For a lot of people, it's grabbing a laptop. For a lot of people, it's grabbing a phone. And you don't just do a hard switch over. Like you don't just say, okay, we have a raised bed and we have some good soil and some seeds. I'm gonna stop going to the grocery store. You don't do that, right? You wait until your garden's starting to produce and it's productive and you have produce coming from it. And then you can start saying, okay, now we're gonna start augmenting. And then you start saying, okay, well, I'm gonna get some chickens and maybe a cattle, head of cattle, whatever. And then you can start. Right? So the same thing happens with tech, technology. You start transitioning what makes sense as you get comfortable. And it's a lot easier than most people think. So once you get a device, you keep your primary device, you use the other device and set it up and get everything going the way you want, start playing around with the applications, get comfortable using those applications, figuring out what they do, how they do, what they do. And then the last step is you take your SIM card out of the phone that you use today and you put it in the new phone. And then all of your messages and whatnot get directed to the new phone. So that's there's a process. It's a journey. It's my long winded way. Josh is saying it's a process. It's a journey. But you have to start somewhere. You have to say this line was crossed way long ago and it's time for me to start taking this seriously. I need to start making this this migration happen. Yeah, I really appreciate your metaphors because I, you know, I've heard this argument a number of different ways. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Clay Clark from the Reawakened tour. We've had him on the show and he kind of explained something pretty similar, but it was sort of kind of all over the place. That's not necessarily his fault, but probably just mine in understanding it. But I think really kind of understanding the gardening metaphor, the jujitsu, whatever, like, I think that that really kind of resonates because I think what I was trying to get to in my earlier question was like, this is just too overwhelming. You know, like, like, Like I don't doubt what you're saying. Like I don't because I'm human and I'm not one to necessarily attribute like very altruistic behaviors to the CEOs and board members of all these major companies because like, you know, money crops, right? So, but I wanna ask you, are you, my notes here says that you're a co -founder of Rightforge. Is that correct? Yeah, so Rightforge, I was a co -founder of Rightforge, it was actually my baby, really saw the writing on the wall when Parler got deplatformed from Amazon Web Services. And I had been warning all sorts of companies and people that stuff like this was going to happen and it was going to start accelerating exponentially. And sure enough, when Parler got given 24 hour notice that they needed to get off of Amazon Web Services, which... It's pretty shocking that their team at Parler chose to go to AWS because they were kicked off of Azure not long prior to moving to AWS. So how they thought somehow that Amazon as a corporation would be different than Microsoft as a corporation is just beyond me. But I digress. So I knew that this was going to be coming. I had all kinds of customers calling me saying, Sean, you were right. They're coming after us. They're trying to deplatform us from GoDaddy or from Salesforce or from all these different Silicon Valley companies that were basically given orders from their board. that you need to get rid of conservative content and conserve, you know, 2A, 1A, anyone that was talking about anything about COVID, anyone that was talking anything about election integrity, not allowed to be on the platform, your D platform, because it's a violation of our terms of service. So I started getting these phone calls. I started building this network of infrastructure providers who I knew personally, as I said I think before the show started, I had a podcast called I Love Data Centers that you can actually still find. So I knew the owner -operators, I knew the players in the space, I wrote the book on the industry, I literally wrote the book on the data center industry, it's called I Love Data Centers, it's basically data centers for dummies, travel the world training and teaching people about this industry. So I knew the players, I built this network, we were the original hosting providers for Project Veritas, for true social, for a lot of conservative content, pro -life stuff that was getting kicked off of various different hosting websites. And yeah, so that's my long -winded answer of saying yes, I was co -founder of Rightforge. But I left that company after the first few months. And that's a long story that we can get into for another time. But I started networking with other different infrastructure hosting providers that were owned and operated by libertarian minded people who wanted to protect and defend their liberties and the constitutional rights that we have. And so once that was established that ground layer which I think this is important that base layer infrastructure layer that most people think is magic right. They don't quite understand how the cloud works or how the Internet really works. It's just servers. But the of the day that are sitting in these facilities that are designed to never lose power, never go down, right? So I became a specialist in that space and I knew that you could create any kind of app you wanted, all this encryption stuff and all these cool things, right? But if that data is sitting on servers that are owned by people that want to turn you off, they can flip the switch and turn you off. So once that core base layer was established and I knew it was owned by good people, then I can move on to the next problem set. And I'm an entrepreneur, so I started saying, okay, what's the next major tip of the spear that we need to go after? And it was these things, hands down these things. So that's what I moved on to after that. you know, and I'm probably a little bit different than maybe some of my other fellow liberals. I do care about free speech and, you know, I'm probably one of the few, you know, anti -Trump liberals that actually didn't really want him to be kicked off of Twitter, to be honest, just because, like, people are going to say horrible things, ridiculous things, offensive things. But if you believe in social capitalism, those voices will get drowned out eventually and go away by themselves kind of thing. But I'd love to get your take on why you think conservative voices are being suppressed. And is it all conservatives? What's your take on that? So it's to control the narrative. It's to control the narrative. You do not want people who are exposing others to concepts and ideas that are contrary to your narrative, right? So if I'm a totalitarian dictator, I'm not going to give my opposition any say, any voice at all. I'm going to attack them, deplatform them. deplatform them and prevent them from speaking. So this is what blows my mind, Will, and it's got to blow your mind, where you have, you call yourself a liberal, right? But now liberals of today are really not liberals. They're like straight up communists, like unapologetic communists. They claim to be communists. They are communists, and they claim to be liberals. And I'm like, but that's totally not aligned with, you know, the Democratic Party of RFK, of JFK, of... You know, even 10 years ago, it's just not in alignment. So your movement, which I would be pissed off about, has been hijacked by people that truly aren't even American. They don't want to believe in a constitution. They want to get rid of the constitution. They don't believe in having sound and secure borders. They want to get rid of sound and secure borders. But... when you're trying to control a narrative, you cannot have the dissenting view and the dissenting voice. So that is, I mean, that makes sense, right? That's pretty basic linear logical thinking. If I don't want a certain point of view to gain traction, I'm going to limit that point of view. And that's where Elon Musk, when he gained ahold of Twitter, he said, I just bought basically a massive crime scene. And he did when you started looking at what was happening in that company and the degree to which their algorithms that were put into the system by people that worked there were dissenting and creating division and or ignoring entire populations of people, deplatforming people, and the algorithms were making it so that certain content was not even being seen. So that, I mean, that makes logical sense, right? If I'm a totalitarian dictator, Will, and I had no ethos, I would do the exact same thing. This is not crazy think. This is how power operates. Power politics works. Yeah, yeah, I mean, so there's so much of what you're saying that I feel like very, like definitely sympathetic to and definitely like, man, like I don't, again, like I don't necessarily, I don't really trust the government. Like I don't really trust, you know. major CEOs like and I don't know why I don't trust them except to say that I mean I could say the things that you've told me and and look in and check in on those and and things like that but it's more like I just don't trust them because they have a lot of power and have a lot of money but then again I kind of want more power and more money I mean I I feel like I'm a Christian I think I am and of course I would say if if Some was like, hey, you're going to choose money? Are you going to choose, you know, God? My hope and my prayers, I'm going to choose God. That's what I want to do. I want to, I don't want to not choose God. And then the question, well, do you have to? I know you can't serve both God and money, and yet we need money to operate within this thing. And even to your own point, you know, money is our ammunition in this war, right? The metaphor that you use, the way that we spend. our dollars is the ammunition. And it's like, so when I'm thinking about like, let's say, like I wanna go in, I wanna like the world economic forum, like they're very open about this. Where would I go to find like the documents or the, you know, the evidence or whatever it is? it on their website. But all you have to do is go into your browser and type in World Economic Forum. You'll go straight to their website. And just, they have their talks all up there. I mean, they literally don't hide any of this. And then, so go check it out and go see what they're saying and then make the decision. That's basically it. Yep. I mean, there are a number of what I call talking heads, you know, on all sides who have been given this platform, who can espouse, you know... whatever on Tucker Carlson as an example or Elon Musk, all these different, you have to pick and choose who do you think actually has a perspective that is based, that is based on truth, that has a good heart and that is not simply trying to follow an agenda. It's for me, so I have been someone who's always done the homework. I don't always just. take someone's word for it. You know, I'm the doubting Thomas, right? I wanna see the holes, right? So I've been digging and I've been reading and researching, asking questions and meeting people and putting it out there and asking God. I know you guys probably both understand this. People say, well, I don't understand, Sean. You say that God talks to you and you've had this conversation with God. I just don't know what God's voice sounds like, right? Well, my question to those people every time is how often are you in the word? How often are you reading scripture, listening to God's voice? How often are you in prayer, meditating, and asking God to hear his voice? Asking God specifically to have a conversation with him. How often are you doing that? Or do you only go to God when you have something going on in your life and you need answers, right? What kind of a two -way relationship is that? Do I really want to interface and dialogue with someone who only comes to me with problems and issues? And am I really getting a two -sided... perspective of that person, you're not, right? So unless you're in the Word on a regular basis, on your knees on a regular basis praying and listening and proactively engaging in that conversation with God and with Jesus and His Word, you're not gonna really understand what His voice says. So with that in mind, I have been spending my life on my knees and praying and I'm not always perfect. You know, my life is a roller coaster. I get it. last couple years, I've spent a lot of time, I've dedicated at least an hour and a half, if not two hours of my day, dedicated in the morning to just focus on doing that so that I know what that voice sounds like. It's for discernment. And I pray for discernment. Discernment. So that as I'm listening to these different talking heads and I'm asking questions like, wonder what this guy's motivating factor is, I can do some quick research and try to figure out where's the money coming from, right? Where's this guy's money coming from? If he's beholden to what master, right, that's gonna be puppeteering, pulling the strings, or is he authentically out speaking truth in love no matter what, right? No matter what might come out of him. That doesn't mean that you can't make money in the process, right? I have a business, I need to make money, I have people I need to pay for, but at the end of the day, if someone comes to me and says, Sean, you need to compromise your values and your integrity and we'll... to the tune of 50 million bucks, I'm gonna say no thank you. Right? Not interested. Right? Because I don't want to have that conversation with my lord and savior when I die. When he says, you knew exactly what you were supposed to do and you chose money over me. Sayonara sucker. Right? That's not the conversation I want to have. So I don't know if that answers your question, man, but that's... we going to have to put an E, an explicit rating, because you did this, the hand signal? I'm not really sure what the rules are for podcasts. fuzz me out when I do it. Fuzz out the face. That's good. You know, this is my last question, Sean. This has been a fascinating conversation, a challenging conversation. I really appreciate you coming on and talking with us about it. But, and you kind of, it's going to be a little bit like of repetition, to be honest, because, but I don't think it will be redundant because, you know, you've basically been talking about this the whole time. And, but the question is, What do you feel like, let me back up for a second and give some context. We have a lot of different people that listen to the podcast, right? One of the reasons that I really, I was like, and I was even talking to Will, like, I really want to have, like, Sean when I got the email is because we don't tend to get as many conservative voices that, you know, just for whatever reason, like a lot of times they just haven't. gotten back to me, people like when I've contacted them and things like that. And I have friends that are very much going to enjoy this conversation and are very much going to be like, yes, I agree 100 % with what Sean is saying. And I'm all in on what he's saying and checking out your stuff. I feel pretty confident about that. We also have a lot of people that would be like, my gosh, I can't believe. what he's saying. I can't believe they would let that guy come on the podcast. What's wrong? And we have tried to never let that be a factor in who we have on. I mean, you've been on and we've also had like the first transgender bishop on. We've had Clay Clark on. So we've had some, a fairly wide range of people. And my question is, if you're thinking about, not that you would change it, but if you're thinking about, addressing liberals to conservatives, Christians, atheists, Muslims, Hindus, everyone. What's the most important thing you feel like from your message that you want to get out? And actually kind of tacking on to that, what are you, I mean, again, you've already said it, but what are you most concerned about? Let's even just say for this next upcoming year moving into this election season, what are your biggest concerns? So apathy, apathy. People who basically are either so disconnected to what's actually happening in the world that they just don't care, they're obliviously just continue to go on and become zombies in the system. And or those who are so black -pilled, right? They just think, well, it's so overwhelming, there's nothing I can do about it, so screw it, I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing, right? But again, as Christians, I believe we are called. to be angels and saints. We're not called to be bystanders in this process. We are called to the front lines of this war. I am no longer in the business, which I used to do for years and years, of trying to convince people of what's happening in the world. I truly believe that if you haven't started to question what you're being fed all day every day from the media, that there's nothing I can say that's going to convince you. There's no documentary you can watch that I can present to you. There's no research I can show you. where you're gonna say, okay, I get it now. It's going to take God working in your life in a very real personal way to make you start to rewire your brain and rethink and relearn that everything you've learned has been a lie, right? And that you need to restart and reengage, which is hard for people to do. I get it. When the pillars of your reality start to crumble and you're like, holy crap, you're telling me that this isn't real, this illusion, this matrix I'm living in isn't real, right? That's a tough pill for people to swallow. But people have to realize that they are called to the front lines of this war. And that's my job these days, is to arm those who are awake and are aware with the tools that they need to be successful in fighting this war and to reclaim their digital privacy and their digital sovereignty. So that's what my primary, you know, I have zero fear actually, to be totally honest with you. I don't fear anything because I know it's all in God's hand. And... We may not see justice, a lot of people want to see justice and Fauci hung and all these people held accountable. I don't care about accountability right now because that's not the battle that I'm in. And I know God is gonna get his vengeance and God is gonna hold people accountable at some point, either in this life or the next, right? So that's not my job to worry and be concerned about. So that's my long -winded answer to your question is I'm really worried about apathy in people saying, eh. Not my problem. Someone else will take care of it. Someone else will deal with it. When I'm saying, look man, if you claim to be a Christian, you are called to be on the front lines of this battle right now and to become awake and aware and to spend time in the Word, spend time praying, spend time listening, communicating with other people, not just online, but get to know your neighbors. Have some coffee, break some bread, figure out where they stand, where they're at. Because if things get complicated, which... you than they already are, you're going to want to know who your neighbors are and who you can trust at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah. So what would you say to like non-Christians that are listening and people that wouldn't say, you know, I'm a Christian, I totally get what you're saying. What would you, what's your appeal? question that I asked you. How do you feel about the fact that your devices and everything around you is listening to you and watching you all the time? And if someone's like, I don't care, no big deal, that's fine, that's their prerogative. That's their deal, right? For those who are like, yeah, I'm not okay with it, I say great. Do you know that there's options and tools that are available to get these companies out of your life? And they're like, I had no idea. So I can walk them through those tools, right? That's awesome. So how can people follow you, kind of, what social media platforms are you a part of, how can they follow you, and how can they, where can they go to get some of these things that you're talking about? Yeah, so I used to be on LinkedIn until April of 22 and they kicked me off because they didn't like the narrative that I was pushing on that platform. They, you know, canceled me even though I had 10 ,000 followers on there and I was sorry, there's something flying in my face over here. Right, that's probably what it is. So I had 10 ,000 followers. I was one of their first customers, you know, at LinkedIn, you know, being in Silicon Valley. totally purged me. So I'm not on LinkedIn is my long story short. We are on True Social. We are on Gab. We are on Twitter. We are on Rumble. You just look at Mark37. You'll see our little shield logo with the Betsy Ross flag on it. That's our company. Or you could go to mark37 .com. We have literally a mountain of content available for you to dig through in the resources page, in the blog page. I've got tons of articles on simple ways to start your migration to digital freedom. I've got the whole video of the online or the on and offline training that I do. So I travel the country right now to different parts, different communities who are interested in this conversation and want to learn these tools. So I'm traveling the country. I do about three, four hour seminars. That's all. online. That's all on our website. You can find it there. So if you're interested in learning more, I would highly recommend you check that out. Dig around. Check out our products and services. If you have any questions, feel free to email me. Support, S -U -P -P -O -R -T at mark37.com is the best way to get a hold of us and our team. We'll get back to you probably within 24 hours tops. Awesome. Well, go ahead. if anyone listening has experience migrating people off of Windows and Mac environments to Linux, and you have experience doing the same from a mobile operating system perspective as well, I want to talk to you. We are growing a team nationally right now, and we want to have people in all the different regions of the country so that as people come to us with needs to make this migration happen, we can point them to you. You can help assist them through that migration process. So please reach out to us at support at mark37 .com. And again, this is a nonpartisan issue. It should be a nonpartisan issue. If you believe in the First Amendment, if you believe in digital privacy, digital security, digital sovereignty, this should be important to you. And for those that say, well, I'm not saying or doing anything that's, you know, outrageous online, so my digital privacy doesn't matter. That is no different than saying that because you're not planning on saying anything offensive to anybody, that your First Amendment does not matter. That you're... Freedom of speech does that matter. Or as we were talking about before the episode, like saying, well, I'm not planning on shooting anybody or I'm not planning on killing anybody and I don't think anybody's going to come try to rob me. So my second amendment shouldn't matter either. Right. The reality is our digital privacy and our digital security does matter and we have to start acting like it. There you go. You guys have heard it from Sean Patrick Theriault. And Sean, really appreciate you coming on the show and talking with us. It was a fascinating, challenging conversation. And people, again, can go to mark37 .com and you can follow some of the resources and recommendations that Sean has made. And until next time, guys, don't keep your conversations left or right, but up. God bless you guys. Have a great day. Thank you. See you.