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Bill Blunden's Rejected DEF CON Presentation Posted Online
Nicola Hahn (1482985) writes "Though the Review Board at DEF CON squelched Bill Blunden's presentation on Chinese cyber-espionage, and the U.S. government has considered imposing visa restrictions to keep out Chinese nationals, Bill has decided to post both the presentation's slide deck and its transcript online. The talk focuses on Mike Rogers, in all his glory, a former FBI agent who delivers a veritable litany of hyperbolic misstatements (likely to be repeated endlessly on AM radio). Rather than allow the DEFCON Review Board to pass judgement as supposed .gov 'experts,' why not allow people to peruse the material and decide for themselves who is credible and who is not?" "Squelched" seems a little harsh (only so many talks can fit, and there's no accounting for taste), but it's certainly good to see any non-accepted DEF CON presentations made public.
Whoa, whoa! Slow down, Ace. You don't just copy the Tesla overnight. You start small. China's already taken over World of Warcraft. Soon, they'll have League of Legends. Hell, it'll probably take them another year or two before you can score a Tesla knock-off.
This is a conjecture talk, I can see why they rejected it. Bill, if you happen to read this comment, I think your talk was refused because it uses a lot of "could" and "might" to build a global picture of corruption, landed back in the banking system and corrupt government, failed to point out any non-obvious outcomes or opportunities, and didn't suggest any ways an attendee could constructively effect or participate in the problem. Generally you can expect DEFCON talks to be based on hard facts, with bonus points when it teaches you something or shows you a technique or process you can apply later.
The book plug at the end also seems like a split purpose for making the talk.
Sorry, but I have to agree that this was rightly rejected (even if the stated reason seems odd to me). Allow me to explain:
In short, what he has done is show a lot of circumstantial evidence that suggests it's possible that Chinese hacking is being done by either foreigners in China, or by non government criminals.
The problem is that on the other side are some very concrete accusations. Mandiant traced the attacks in their APT1 report back to the very building belonging to a specific unit. The USA Govt. Has indicted named hackers associated with that. While I'm not exactly inclined to accept that blindly, any counter argument needs to be much better than Blunden's.
For one, he fails to address any of the concrete accusations, and instead selects the rather easy target of a politician, who by nature is full of bs. His argument is not that Rogers is a windbag, or that Alexander used weasel words ("my opinion" etc), but rather the larger topic. It is entirely possible that the Chinese Gov't is behind most of the attacks, and Rogers et al are still dirtbags.
Posted ac due to being on my mobile.
What you're saying may be true in regard to it being accepted to DefCon, but on the whole his analysis sounds about right. I don't know if civilians have the information to prove what he says, one way or another, but the economic motivations sure line up nicely.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
There are aspects of your submission that is entirely true, but they are also common knowledge. We can agree that China plays a large part as 'boogeyman' it's a popular discussion point, however we don't think it's the right fit for DEF CON main stage. Some of the reasons we feel that way are that your presentation is heavy on opinion , current news and personal perspective , but for it to be considered for the DEF CON stage we'd need more official intelligence such as .gov. backing it up .
TL;DR: DEF CON sponsors and the government alike both cash in on the bogeyman. if this year we feature a talk about moderation and responsible reaction to FUD, more than a few vendors booths might start looking a little foolish. We elect to keep the CON front-and-center this year.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The presentation is a bunch of conspiracy theory bullshit, chock full of pedantic analysis of out-of-context quotes from politicians and various other talking heads. There's no data, facts, or real references. It obviously should have been rejected.
The submission simply would not have made it to the front page of this site unless "squelched" (or some similar word like "silenced" or "censored") was used.
This talk reads like the tech equivalent of airplane contrails. It's a bunch of loose conjectures strung together from headlines and some casual Google searches. As a tech, I would have liked to have seen more technical meat pointing to more than maybe, possibly, could be. It sounds like he submitted a pretty crappy talk, and is going to try and milk his rejection to pimp his book. I think there are valid questions to be asked. Mandiant, for example, has profited mightily from the business thrown at it from the U.S. government. But it's a long reach from "black market baby milk powder" to "It's the fault of the banks!"
so you've personally seen the other 600 submissions for Defcon this year, and can unequivocally say that this deserved to be at the top of the pack?
No. this dude is just making a song and dance about being one of the 550 people who get a rejection letter every year.
My God, it's already too late...
Seriously, that's Death by PowerPoint!
You're an idiot.
Jeff hasn't been a part of Black Hat for years now, and the last connections between BlackHat and Defcon were broken last year. ,there's nothing about 'silencing' this guy, he's just another one of the many hundreds of CFP submissions that don't make it to the top of the pile.
and No, it's loaded with *quotes*, not facts.
I just had a look at the 94 slides. The content is interesting, and contrary to what was said, it is quite well sourced.
That presentation dismiss China spying being led by the government, then notes that damage claims on US economy are crazily high and not well backed. The last part of the presentation deals with US spying, how it got out of US People control, and how banks also ran out of US People control.
IMO this was turned down because it criticize the US political system. No patriot enough, or not patriot the way our masters want us to be. At least it is interesting about DEF CON organizers' minds
it's the Gibbs entropy.
i guess it's there because entropy is cool.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky