Trump's 4D Chess, Your North Korean Coworker, and Hard Celsius

Summary

Podcast Summary: Everybody's Business

Episode: Trump's 4D Chess, Your North Korean Coworker, and Hard Celsius
Hosts: Max Chafkin & Stacey Vanek Smith
Date: July 31, 2025

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Main Theme

This episode explores the concept of “secrets” in business and economics—from the true state of the US economy and Trump’s trade maneuverings, to the bizarre but real phenomenon of North Korean IT workers secretly working for US companies, and (in lighter news) the accidental crossover between energy drinks and hard seltzer.

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Key Segments and Insights

1. Is the Economy Secretly Good or Bad?

[01:16–07:02]

• Overview: US economic growth appears surprisingly strong, but public sentiment is mixed. The hosts hit the streets of NYC for personal “economic indicators” and bring in Harvard economist Ken Rogoff for a deeper dive on GDP figures.
• Notable Street Quotes:
  • “My personal economic indicator is…if the total at the grocery store makes me feel like there’s been a mistake.” (Stacey, [04:55])
  • “We’ve been Target, just two bags of groceries, nothing fancy.” “$200 bucks.” ([04:16])
• Consumer Confidence:
  • Numbers are up, but people’s lived experiences differ widely—from job insecurity to complaints about the rising cost of living in NYC.
  • The “restroom index,” i.e., cleanliness of public restrooms, is jokingly suggested as an economic health marker.

2. Ken Rogoff: Is Trump Playing 4D Chess with the Economy?

[06:34–17:13]

• GDP Analysis:
  • The headline 3% growth is partly due to reduced imports following tariffs, and may not accurately reflect underlying domestic demand.
  • Business investment is soft due to uncertainty over tariffs, while the consumer remains surprisingly resilient.
  • “You really need to average the first two quarters to sort of get a feel of what’s going on.” (Ken Rogoff, [07:59])
• Tariff Chaos:
  • Trump’s tariff policies are described as “mercurial” but sometimes pragmatic.
  • “He’s a wild man, but he’s also a pragmatist…when he sees something not working, he changes it, which has been an increasingly rare thing in Washington.” (Ken Rogoff, [09:28])
  • US is a uniquely “closed” and resilient economy, less dependent on foreign imports than many peers, but long-term risks remain.
• 4D Chess Analogy:
  • Rogoff likens Trump to a “coffee house chess player”: “They typically are better than you think, but not as good as they think…very good at beating weak players, but have trouble when they get to playing strong players.” ([16:18])
• Business Investment:
  • Persistent policy uncertainty is causing firms to hold back, a behavior mirrored in economic theory (Ben Bernanke’s thesis).
  • “Why build a new factory? You don’t know what the tariff’s going to be.” (Ken Rogoff, [14:08])
  • Stock market highs may be misleading, boosted more by AI-fueled staff cuts than actual economic expansion.

3. Your North Korean Coworker: The Wild Remote Worker Scheme

Guest: Evan Ratliff, journalist
[20:19–32:34]

• Context: North Korea has deployed thousands of trained IT professionals to work remotely—incognito—for US and Western companies, with their salaries funneled back to fund the regime’s weapons programs.
• Operation Details:
  • North Koreans use “laptop farmers” in the US to receive work hardware and spoof US locations via remote software.
  • “She [Christina Chapman] was being prosecuted...people that keep laptops in their houses…and that the North Korean workers can use those laptops remotely and work American jobs.” (Evan Ratliff, [24:05])
  • Major companies—including Google, Nvidia, Amazon, NBCUniversal, Nike—unknowingly employed these workers ([28:47]).
• How They Get Away With It:
  • Lax checks by third-party staffing firms mean little to no verification.
  • “It’s hard to find good IT workers…so you go on the open market…and find who you can find.” (Evan Ratliff, [30:25])
• Risk & Reactions:
  • Companies are most worried about embarrassment; exfiltration of sensitive data is a looming risk.
  • “Most of the workers raise money for the North Korean government simply by striving to do average work and collect their pay.” (Evan Ratliff, [22:27])
  • The phenomenon raises philosophical questions about the nature of remote work and global labor markets.

4. The Underrated Story: Hard Seltzer or…Energy Drink?

[33:45–36:44]

• Story: Cans of High Noon (a spiked seltzer) were accidentally labeled and sold as Celsius (a popular energy drink), leading some to start their day with vodka unknowingly.
  • “Assumedly some people cracked open a nice can of Celsius…hoping to maybe focus, get ready for the day, and instead…were transported to relaxation town.” (Max, [35:03])
• Takeaway: Highlights the chaos possible in consumable goods supply chains and the accidental mixing of two popular categories—hard seltzer and energy drinks.

5. Listener Mail & Closing Thoughts

[36:44–38:11]

• Listener Tim T. shares an anecdote about missing out on Capital One’s marketed rates due to fine-print requirements, sparking a quick reflection on financial transparency.
• The hosts invite listeners to share their own “personal economic indicators,” highlighting the fun and relatability of unconventional economic data points.

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Notable Quotes

• Ken Rogoff on Trump:

  • “He’s a wild man, but he’s also a pragmatist…when he sees something not working, he changes it.” ([09:28])
  • "We have this phrase called ‘coffee house chess players’...I sort of do feel that describes a lot of Trump’s analysis and philosophy.” ([16:18])

• Evan Ratliff on North Korean IT Workers:

  • “They're just doing jobs. They're just doing remote jobs in the US and getting US paychecks to raise money for the North Korean government.” ([22:27])
  • “The company’s biggest problem is embarrassment, which is something I encountered when I said that I was going to out many of these companies…” ([28:33])

• On Consumer Reality:

  • “My personal economic indicator is…if the total at the grocery store makes me feel like there’s been a mistake.” (Stacey, [04:55])
  • “When businesses aren’t growing…that means the economy’s gonna stop expanding.” (Stacey, [14:50])

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Timestamps at a Glance

• 01:16 – The episode’s "secret" theme, US economic data look good
• 03:07–05:51 – On-the-street interviews: real Americans’ economic indicators
• 06:34–17:13 – Ken Rogoff on GDP, tariffs, Trump’s economic strategy
• 20:19–32:34 – Evan Ratliff on North Korean remote work scheme, security risks
• 33:54–36:44 – The High Noon/Celsius recall: seltzer meets energy drink
• 36:44–38:11 – Listener mail: Capital One savings, personal economic indicators invite

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Tone & Takeaways

• The episode balances smart economic analysis with humor, real-world examples, and illuminating reporting on unlikely business secrets.
• Both hosts maintain an approachable, witty, and slightly irreverent tone while collaborating with experts (Ken Rogoff and Evan Ratliff) to dig beneath the headlines.
• Memorable moments include the “restroom index” as an economic measure, Trump as a “coffeehouse chess player,” and the jaw-dropping reality of an American IT workforce quietly funding North Korean arms.

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Recommended For:
Listeners interested in understanding the overlap between economics, geopolitics, and real-life business weirdness—brought to life with clever analogies and original reporting.

Transcript

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Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts Radio.

[D]

News.

[E]

This is everybody's business from Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Stacey Vanek Smith.

[D]

And I'm Max Chavkin. And Stacey, this week, secrets Secrets is the theme. Yeah, the US Economy, is it secretly good? Is it secretly bad? We're going to try to find out.

[E]

Yeah, we got some big economic data really positive about economic growth which surprised a lot of people. And we've got economist Ken Rogoff here to do a data deep dive with us.

[D]

Also, is your co worker secretly working for the North Koreans?

[E]

I don't know. Is he?

[D]

Well, we'll find out.

[E]

Max, is there something that you need to disclose?

[D]

And one final secret, Stacy. Is your energy drink secretly filled with vodka?

[E]

I mean, if it is, it's a.

[D]

Question actually right now.

[E]

I have noticed, you know, my writing is really loosened up lately. Feeling really good. Loving this energy drink. Is that a thing that's happening in the world?

[D]

You'll have to wait till the end.

[E]

Of the energy drinks. That seems dangerous. So Max, we've been talking about the numbers. A lot of data coming in about the economy, most of it looking pretty good this week. And also people are apparently feeling good about the economy.

[D]

Yeah, consumer confidence numbers were out this week and we found that people were feeling better about things. The direction of the economy. Just a note, Stacy, consumer confidence different from consumer sentiment which we talked about a couple episodes earlier. We are still waiting on those numbers.

[E]

So.

[D]

So you know, we'll keep you updated though.

[E]

A lot of People trying to measure other people's feelings. So I thought, like, I should get out in the field and do the same thing. Right. Because of course, the economy, it's not just numbers, it's not just data. We live in it. Right. We have. We all have our own economic indicators that we watch in our lives. So to that end, I thought I would go to a sort of an economically iconic spot here in New York. Okay, 34th Street, Macy's.

[D]

Yeah. I mean, what could be more indicative of a personal economic indicator than that? And I love this, by the way. I can't wait to see what people say. I think they're going to come up with some ideas that may be better than what the economists have.

[E]

I was very surprised. Here's what they said.

[C]

So an hour ago, we've been to a Papa Lake restroom which was super clean.

[E]

It seems like a good economic indicator.

[D]

Yeah. So we can still afford to have.

[C]

Clean public restrooms, which is fantastic.

[E]

How do you feel like the economy's doing right now? Terrible. Really? The job market, like, it's hard. What field do you work in? Mostly retail. I was working at Steve Madden a couple months ago and I got laid off. And I have been trying to find a job since.

[C]

Since.

[E]

But it's hard. Like, how many jobs have you applied to?

[F]

A lot.

[E]

Like, I can't really, like, name a lot. Maybe like 25 plus, generally on the security of my job. Are you worried? 20% worried. 20%, but 80% not.

[D]

Yes. Feel pretty stable right now.

[E]

You know, the subway is really.

[D]

It's not really.

[C]

We've been target, just two bags of groceries, nothing fancy.

[D]

200 bucks.

[C]

Like, what did we buy?

[E]

The cost of living is going up. And mind you, the wage is barely going up. You know, you got to pay your.

[D]

Bills, but you got to have money to eat.

[E]

It's hard out here being in New York, you know what I'm saying?

[D]

All right, so the restroom index. I know.

[E]

I kind of loved that.

[D]

Look at this. You got to send some. Look at the restrooms. And if they're too clean, I don't.

[E]

Think he can cut counterpoint. The subway index not looking so good.

[D]

You have a personal economic indicator, Stacey?

[E]

My personal economic indicator is a little bit at the grocery store, like when the checker rings everything up, if the total makes me feel like there's been a mistake. That is my economic indicator. I've been feeling that way for years now. I'm like, there's. I got charged twice for something.

[D]

What I've started to do to Feel better about that. When I go to Costco and it's like $450 for like a week and a half's worth of groceries. And I feel bad. I have three children, so a lot of groceries, but. And I feel bad. I say, oh, maybe we'll set a record.

[E]

Oh, yeah, that's good. Just kind of silver lining it. Exactly. Not that any of us can afford silver right now, but, yes, I love that. I love. So, Max, there's a lot of big economic news this week. One of the big ones is, I think, gross domestic product.

[D]

Gdp. Yeah.

[E]

Yes. Which is, we should say, the sum total of all the goods and services the country produces. There. There's some controversy around it, but generally it's considered to be, you know, the measure of economic growth for an economy. And that measure came out this week looking really good.

[D]

Yeah, the. Between April and June, the economy grew at a rate of 3%. That's pretty solid, right, Stacy?

[E]

After negative growth.

[D]

Exactly. After not only amid all of the sort of crazy economic back and forth of tariffs, all these warnings from a lot of smart people that the economy. This is not going to be good for the economy. And like you said, the previous quarter, the U.S. economy shrank. So. So good news.

[E]

Yeah. I mean, 3% growth on an economy the size of the U.S. economy is. Is really strong. But, you know, sometimes these numbers can be a little deceiving. So I wanted to bring in someone who could do kind of a deep dive into the data with us. And we're very lucky to have Ken Rogoff with us. Ken, an economist at Harvard, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, author of the new book Our Dollar, your Problem. Welcome, Ken.

[C]

Hey, thank you, Stacey and Max, for having me.

[E]

So this 3% number, when you saw the 3%, what went through your head?

[C]

Well, I was surprised that it was as high as it was. But on the other hand, you know, these numbers get revised constantly. This is a first reading, and we don't really know what it'll look like at the end. The earlier number, which is actually negative in the first quarter, was mostly because everyone was importing like crazy ahead of the tariffs, and this time they imported less and imports got subtracted off from exports. Yeah, I mean, consumption, I think, was. Am I Remembering right? 1.4% is probably, you know, more capturing what's going on. Business investment was soft. The economy is slowing. And I think something to bear in mind is we started with a very strong economy.

[E]

Wait, the economy is slowing, but it looks like it's Growing. The number says growing, but it's.

[C]

You really need to average the first two quarters to sort of get a feel of what's going on. Yeah, I mean, you have to remember we started with a very strong economy at the beginning of the year. It was the envy of the world. There's the old joke about what's the easiest way to make a small fortune, and the answer is to start with a large one. And so our economy was really good.

[D]

I thought it was to become a movie producer.

[E]

I thought it was crypto.

[C]

All right, I'm older than you, but.

[D]

Yeah, I know.

[C]

I mean, I think in general, the economy has not slowed as much as one would think, not given the terrorists. But the chaos, it did hold back business investment, and business investment was soft, and in the long run, that's what's driving growth. But it doesn't seem to hold back the consumer that much.

[D]

Yeah. And the chaos continues. Stacy and I, what was it two weeks ago? We talked about copper tariffs. Yeah, these 50% copper tariffs, I believe it was yesterday, recording this on Thursday, Trump came out and says actually exempting refined copper, which is the most widely traded traded version of this. So, like, all of a sudden, you have this huge amount of copper that's now sitting in the US and is just, you know, tanking the prices. I mean, there's so much chaos. Ken, why do you think that has proven less of a drag than we would have expected?

[C]

Well, I mean, okay, just to be fair to Trump, he's a wild man, but he's also a pragmatist. And so, you know, one of better qualities is when he sees something not working, he changes it, which has been an increasingly rare thing in Washington. I mean, that's something he does well. So things do seem to be settling down. I have to tell you that if you poll academic economists on what tariffs would do. We were all talking about 10% a while ago. Now it's settled at 15 is the norm. I think everybody would have said not the greatest idea, but not the end of the world. We're a relatively closed economy. If you have the 10% on imports, you can cut taxes somewhere else. It's a terrible idea, let's be clear. But it's not the end of the world. We have a lot of bad taxes.

[E]

By closed economy, you mean that, like, we can kind of produce a lot of what we need?

[C]

Oh, yeah. I mean, you compare us to New Zealand or, you know, Canada, our. Our 51st state, according to Trump. Or Australia or Latin America, they have to import A lot of things, we are unique. Not only that, we make stuff for ourselves. We have a lot of natural resources. We're still a breadbasket to the world. We have an amazing piece of land. We have water and everything. So our economy is very diverse. It's very resilient. But I think the long run is yet to come here. The verdict. Was Trump right about everything, meaning it's not such a big deal, or were the economists right that undermining institutions, closing ourselves off to trade are going to hurt us in the long run? I think it's going to take us years for that to sort out.

[D]

Ken, you, you said that economists had sort of. And a lot of people. Right. I think a lot of people on Wall street as well were sort of expecting a tariff of around 10 to 15%. Like something that would be, maybe, that would seem tough, not, maybe not ideal from the point of economists, but, like, not disastrous. That's what you were just saying. Where is the number? Like, this feels dumb to ask, but, like, how crazy is it right now? Because, like, there's been so much back and forth and changes and, and revisions and Trump is taco ing one minute and copper is a terrific, like, where is it right now?

[E]

Is it.

[D]

It's higher than that, I guess. Right.

[C]

So before I answer your question, I just want to say I, I consider myself as a, I am a Harvard professor. I do not have Trump derangement syndrome. I think he's right about some things. But what I'm about to say is an area where, you know, I, I think he's a problem, which is he has a very mercurial personality. So we have a tariff quote, unquote deal now with Europe. I mean, it'll take two years to work out with Japan, with Korea. Do we. I mean, he signed an agreement with Canada and Mexico in 2018, and then he decided he didn't like it. Brazil. He just said 50% tariff on Brazil. Because I don't like your politics. We actually run a surplus with Brazil, oddly enough, because his whole rationale for this was to reduce our deficit. But that's not, that's an aside. He's mercurial. Also, he's having the time of his life. I mean, look at him. He's so happy. And all the world leaders are being sycophantic to him and the tariffs is half of it. If he just says, okay, everybody, 15%, we're done, just don't think about it, he's not going to be happy with that. He's going to Wake up on the wrong side of the bed and suddenly have a tariff on Sweden or whatever. So no, I think we're still in the thick of this. I have to say things have gone better than most predictions. The inflation's been significant, but the big one hasn't come through. I think it will, I think we'll get more inflation. But all in all, he's probably feeling pretty terrific about how his first six months have gone.

[E]

So one thing I did want to kind of dig into that you mentioned earlier in our conversation was businesses are not expanding. I feel like that potentially has big economic implications. Will you talk about like what that means and like on a, like what the definition of that is and then also like why that's such a big deal?

[C]

Well, they're not invest, they're waiting because they don't know what's going on. And one of the, my Ben Bernanke was my classmate at MIT and his thesis was about if there's a lot of uncertainty, investment will go down.

[E]

People are, wait, they're not going to build a new factory, they're not going to hire more people, they're not going to.

[C]

Yeah, why? Why build a new factory? You don't know what the tariff's going to be. Should you build it in Canada? Should you build it in the United States? So they've been holding back. Now maybe there'll be a gusher of investment now, but there's been uncertainty. I mean the stock market obviously really has been having a good time. They are back to all time highs. I just want to say I think part of that is not growth. It's the realization they can get rid of a lot of their workers and have a lot more profits thanks to AI. So I don't think we can look at the stock market and say that's an A plus for the economy. No, it's, I think something more malignant.

[E]

But when businesses aren't growing, I mean that means the economy can't expand because when businesses grow, they hire, they expand. That grows the economy. So I feel like that number is particularly worrying because if businesses stop expanding, that means the economy's gonna stop expanding.

[C]

Well, you put that very well, Stacy. I can't add to that except that we need years for this to take place. Let's say you decide to build a new factory. I mean that takes years just to get the permits, you know, to make it all happen. The effect of these policies will take a long time to see in many cases.

[E]

Okay, so Ken, in addition to being an economist and an author and a professor at Harvard. You are also a chess player, A grandmaster. Yeah. Of like a big deal chess player.

[C]

Yeah. I represented the US in the World Championships a long time ago, if you can believe that. But that was. I was a sort of more or less did nothing else during my high school years.

[D]

You mostly probably play 3D chess, right, Ken? Not. Not 40 chess.

[E]

Yeah. When we found this out, we were like, we've got to ask Ken what he thinks of the thing that people are often saying about President Trump, which is that he's playing 4D chess. As someone who may have actually played.

[D]

4D chess, what is the 4th D time?

[E]

Maybe you go backwards in time. I don't know.

[C]

I actually have a view. Trump as a chess player in some ways.

[D]

Really.

[C]

We have this phrase called coffee house chess players, which are. They typically are better than you think, but not as good as they think. And I sort of do feel that describes a lot of Trump's analysis and philosophy. And they also tend to be very good at beating weak players, but have trouble when they get to playing strong players. But he has a lot of common sense ideas and even I know he says a lot of. If you take every word he says, it's pretty easy to find a lot of crazy things. But he has a lot of common sense things. But some things like tariffs that he has just messianic conviction about. It's almost as if his life was saved so he could bring tariffs to the world. He's just wrong. I mean, it is not a great idea.

[E]

Excellent. Well, economist, author, professor and chess grandmaster Ken Rogoff, thank you for talking with us.

[C]

Thank you for having me.

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[D]

Stacey, did you know that if you are running a tech company or if you work at a tech company, there is a danger, a potential, even a national security risk. I'd say that one of your colleagues or one of your employees, or maybe even many of your colleagues or employees could be secret agents in North Korea posing as American IT workers.

[E]

I can honestly say that has never actually crossed my mind, but maybe that explains some things in my working history.

[D]

So I actually, I had followed this story a ton, tiny bit because it's so weird. And then amazingly, Bloomberg businessweek just published this story by Evan Ratliff, who's a freelance writer who's a contributor to BusinessWeek, created the podcast about AI that I love called Shell Game, which everyone should check out. He dug deep into this story for this for a piece in BusinessWeek that just came out. It's called Confessions of a Laptop how an American Helped North Korea's Wild Remote Worker Scheme. And Stacey, Evan is here with us now.

[E]

Hey, Evan, Welcome.

[F]

Hey. Thank you. I'm Very happy to be here.

[D]

So, Evan, before we get to the specifics of the story you wrote, give us a quick overview of this phenomena.

[F]

Well, most people will know that North Korea is under sanctions, global sanctions, particularly sanctions, very stringent sanctions from the United States, many other countries, because of its government's behavior in a variety of ways, but particularly around nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. So North Korea is really not allowed to transact with a lot of countries, especially the United States. And as a result of that, they have come up with all these creative ways to evade those sanctions over the years. Stealing money. For a while, they were making meth and distributing it internationally.

[D]

Right?

[F]

A lot of hacking, Hacking, cryptocurrencies, theft. Recently, last five years and a little bit more. They've come up with this plan, which is basically to have their workers, IT workers that they train, get jobs in the United States and collect the salaries. Like that's the scheme.

[D]

It's so funny. You go from like, meth ransomware, like doing all these like, super nefarious things. And like, what if we just had these people just get, like work at Facebook or work at Google or work at Amazon or something?

[F]

Right? It's just remote work. They're just doing remote work. And now it takes a lot, including a number of illegal steps for them to do this. But fundamentally, they're doing something quite boring, which is just get the jobs, collect the salary.

[E]

And apparently, like, there are thousands of workers doing this outside North Korea. And there's a quote from your story, which I really loved. That said quote, sometimes the workers turn to extortion, threatening to reveal sensitive secrets if they aren't paid a ransom. But security researchers have found that most of the workers raise money for the North Korean government simply by striving to do average work and collect their pay. I mean, that's. They're just doing jobs. They're just doing remote jobs in the US and getting US Paychecks to raise money for the North Korean government. That's the plan, yes.

[F]

And trying to keep their heads down, you know, so they don't get fired, do enough work to keep the job. Sometimes they do a really good job, but then the money, and we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Like the UN estimates 250 million to $600 million each year from these jobs. That goes straight into the munitions program, which is ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. So basically, they're doing these IT jobs to fund nuclear weapons.

[E]

They're just getting a paycheck to fund North Korea's nuclear Missile program.

[F]

That's right.

[D]

Evan, can you just talk about what you did in this piece? Because this was pretty new. You. You basically found one of the people in the US that the North Korean. These North Korean agents basically need American intermediaries to set this up, to, like, help them facilitate their jobs or whatever. And you basically spent. Ended up spending time with this woman, Christina Maria Chapman, who's like, one of these intermediaries, and the story's told through her. I'm just kind of curious, first of all, how you came across her and kind of what she was like or what her experience was.

[F]

Well, I came across her because she was being prosecuted by the Department of Justice. And what happens in these cases is companies uncover these North Korean workers. Sometimes they report it to the FBI. They don't always have to, and then the FBI starts investigating them. But the problem is the people they really want are in North Korea or in China, and they really can't get to them. So the people they can get to are what they call facilitators, which include laptop farmers, people that keep laptops in their houses, in their apartments that will be on all the time, such that North Korean workers can use those laptops remotely and work American jobs.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

Explain how that works. Like, why do they need a laptop that is based in the US Why did Christina have, like, her. I think it was like her RV was full of, like, dozens of laptops at one point.

[F]

Dozens of laptops? Yes. They need the laptops because let's say one of them gets a job at Google. And we can say Google, because Google definitively hired one of these North Korean workers. So they get a job at Google, a remote job, and then Google says, okay, we're going to send you a work laptop. And they can't say, well, send it to me on this. In this town, on the border of North Korea, in China. Instead, they recruit someone in the United States to be their laptop farmer, and that the laptop gets sent to that person's address. So they claim, well, that's my address, or maybe it's my sister's address or it's my roommate's address. The laptop gets sent there, but then they have to use it to work. So they're basically using remote access software to log in remotely to that laptop and then work on that laptop for Google. But then someone has to maintain that laptop, and that is the role of someone like Christina Chapman is keeping the laptops functional so that all of these workers can pretend to be in America. So if Google looks, they'll See an IP address from an American location rather than from a foreign location.

[D]

It's so crazy, because a big part of her job, as I remember from the story, is basically just like, restarting people's computers. And she gets, like, frantic messages from various workers that she's managed, like, turn the laptop on or. Or whatever. There's also the thing that happens if, Evan, you talk about this. Like, sometimes you're expected to show up on a video call, which creates kind of problems for these secret North Korean workers. If they did have a backdrop, it would just be like a room full of North Korean operatives secretly working at Facebook or whatever. It'd be like a barracks or something.

[F]

Yeah. So, I mean, nobody loves a video call, really, or a lot of video calls. But the North Koreans like them even less because it's a way to get found out. But they have very clever. First of all, they can use software so that it looks like they're turning on the camera on the work laptop that's actually in, let's say, Christina Chapman's house. And then they will do the occasional video call, you know, with a blank wall behind them. Sometimes they'll intentionally reduce the bandwidth so it gets fuzzy, so they could say off. Well, I don't have a very good connection, and therefore I'm gonna have to go camera off. But they do get found out that way. Christina Chapman even said that sometimes they accidentally would turn on their camera and she would see a room full of North Koreans, although she didn't know they were North Koreans. She thought they were Chinese working out of an apartment.

[E]

You say in the article that if you are an American company that's hired contract IT workers, you've probably hired a North Korean. You found evidence that Google, Nvidia, Amazon, NBC Universal all hired North Korean workers. But there was something in your story that stuck out to me, which was this idea that a lot of the customers say, like, who cares? I mean, if it is people from North Korea and they're just doing the job and trying to pick up a paycheck, it's not that different from other workers. So what exactly is the problem here? I mean, other than the existential, like, nuclear proliferation, Is this really an issue?

[F]

I mean, some of the companies, like you say, one of the security researchers in particular, said he ran into this a lot, where companies would say, hey, this guy's good. Like, do I have to let this guy go? But, I mean, there are a few issues there. One is, of course, as you say, the ballistic missile and nuclear weapons issue. That's where the money is going.

[E]

I mean, it's a horrible regime. I don't think it should be supported. But you know, just from the company's point of view, it is.

[F]

By US Law, it's illegal for these companies to even transact with North Korean agents. So they are technically in violation of the law if they knowingly hire a North Korean. And then there's all sorts of other laws that get broken, like they have to fake their i9 forms and things like that.

[E]

But that's not the company's problem if they don't know.

[F]

The company's biggest problem is embarrassment, which is something I encountered when I said that I was going to out many of these companies who had never been outed before as having hired North Koreans. Like they're worried about their stock price.

[E]

And who were these companies?

[F]

Amazon, Google, Boeing, Hyatt, Massmutual Insurance, NBC Universal, Nike, Nvidia.

[E]

How do these companies not know? I mean, these are like tech companies that deal with tech security all the time. It's a little worrisome that they did this.

[F]

There is a lack of due diligence, I think you could say. It'd be safe to say. What happens a lot of times is these companies, they hire so many IT workers and remote workers that they hire them through these third party staffing companies. And they assume that the staffing companies have done the due diligence. So they don't actually do any. They just, the staffing company sends them someone and they say, oh, okay, they're good. But the staffing company, they may have not done any due diligence. And so just down the line, like, no one's actually doing a very good job of checking these people out.

[D]

There's also, we should say there's an additional problem which the story mentions, which is that. And that list of companies you just read off hints at it. Like there's the risk of North Korea, like exfiltrating information from one of these companies. Right. Like, one of the weird mysteries of this, and Evan mentions this in the story, is that so far these workers seem to be just doing their jobs. But of course there is a risk they could try to steal data. But I want to just get to, to kind of maybe a bigger question, Evan, which is like, are these jobs just like bs? Like, like the fact that you mentioned this in the story, like some of these North Korean operatives are holding multiple jobs at the same time, doesn't it kind of just make you think, like, maybe these tech firms are, are overpaying for this work? Or something. Or like, like, what is it about this work that makes it so vulnerable to this kind of thing?

[F]

I mean, I would never cast aspersions on the companies and their hiring policies, but I will say, like, they're pretty well trained. Many of these IT workers. They're not just slobs who have never done any IT work. Like, the North Korean government has trained them up quite well. And then the other issue is, like, it's hard to find good IT workers. Like, there's a lot more jobs maybe than there are people trained for many of these roles. And so you go on the open market and you find who you can find. And especially, I mean, the tech companies should know better. But some of these other companies we take, like Hyatt Hotels or these other companies, they may be not experts in hiring tech workers in the first place. And so that's why it's a little bit easier for them to get in. But I mean, it's already. It is a phenomenon that actually American tech workers do a thing called job stacking, sometimes where they have more than one job and they collect the salaries from both.

[D]

Yeah, you. You all probably saw this, but earlier this month, this tech worker, I think his name was Soham Parikh, he went viral because, like, basically every tech company in Silicon Valley discovered they'd hired this guy and he was doing some kind of extreme form of job stacking. And it was this kind of, like, viral moment. Hey, Evan, before we let you go, I mean, has this changed the way you think about work in general, especially this kind of, like, white collar, remote work?

[F]

A little bit. I mean, even with all the problems we've described, like, there are real consequences to this scheme. It still can sort of make you think, like, what is work? Like, we've got people in North Korea who are not supposed to be doing these jobs, but all they did was say, like, I don't know, these jobs are available. Like, we can do them as well as anyone else, so, like, let's do them. And it's sort of like a product of globalization more than anything else. And so it doesn't make me think less of the jobs in any way. It just makes me think, well, this is one of these sort of unforeseen underground consequences of globalization, and we've kind of seen larger ones. And this is kind of like a weird, quirky one that you don't really think about until it shows up.

[D]

Evan Ratliff, thank you for being here.

[F]

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[A]

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[E]

It is time where we talk about our underrated story of the week. And this one's all you. I don't actually know that much about. So what did you find?

[D]

All right, so this is in. In in retail news or cons Consumable goods news. I don't know.

[E]

Consumable. Anyway, goods news. Yeah.

[D]

We got news on Wednesday of a recall High Noon, which makes a very popular, I think it's the most popular hard seltzer brand.

[E]

High Noon, like it's Shootout at the OK Corral is the name. I like it.

[D]

You've never had this?

[E]

I have never had High Noon, so.

[D]

This is very popular.

[E]

I'm too high strung already. If I had an energy drink, I don't even know what would happen.

[D]

It's not an energy drink. It' it's a. Well, and that, Stacey, is the problem. It's a, it's an alcoholic beverage. It's a spirit in a with some fresh juice. It sounds very refreshing. Kind of type of thing you might want to have at the end of the day at the beach or whatever. Unfortunately, a bunch of High Noons were sold in a bunch of states marketed as Celsius, which is an energy drink that people normally drink in the morning when they're trying to get stuff done. Let's see, Florida, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, a lot of Wisconsin. Assumedly some people cracked open a nice can of Celsius, hoping to maybe focus, get ready for the day and instead.

[E]

Look at economic data were transported to.

[D]

You know, the relaxation town. So they had to anyway, this happened because of a bottling mishap or a Canning mishap. It comes in a can. Yes. High Noon and Celsius. Actually totally different companies. High Noon Fun fact is owned by E. And J. Gallo, which actually makes the Gallo wine. Yeah, yeah. Like the delicious boxed win that you and I know love and enjoy the.

[E]

Words delicious and boxed wines.

[D]

And anyway, it's also hard seltzer. And I guess the company that was doing the canning got them mixed up.

[E]

Maybe they got into the product a.

[D]

Little bit, maybe, I don't know, sample it. And the funny thing is, like, Celsius, which, you know, naturally you'd kind of want to blame Celsius for this. Like, they had nothing to do with it. They didn't make these cans. They just. Like, the canning company just took their design and put it on some hard seltzer.

[C]

Wow.

[D]

I think this is fun, though, because if you just.

[E]

You do. How is this fun?

[D]

Like, if I accidentally drank a hard seltzer instead of an energy drink, I think, like, nine times out of 10, unless I didn't have to drive or operate heavy.

[E]

It'd be like finding, like, a bonus toy in your cereal box.

[D]

Exactly. Yeah.

[E]

This is the thing. If I drink. Accidentally drank alcohol in the morning, like, my week was. Would be done.

[D]

All right, well, the funny thing is, like, I don't think I've ever had, like, you. I don't think I've ever had a High Noon or a Celsius. I don't know if you've ever had a Celsius, but those are, like, the two most popular products in their categories. Those are hot categories. So, like, I. I guess I could conceivably, like, not know until.

[E]

Secret collaboration.

[D]

All right, before we go, we got Stacey, I wanted to read an email we got from Tim T. About CFPB episode. So, okay, so this came up during the episode. Remember, I think Nick mentioned Nick Hand.

[E]

Or Nick Hand worker.

[D]

He mentioned, like, one of these investigations with Capital One. This was, like, where Capital One had been promising very high savings account rates and not giving those rates. And the explanation was the customers had not opted in. There had been a CFPB investigation and I believe a settlement, and that is now done.

[E]

I think it's null. Yeah.

[D]

So anyway, Tim appreciated the episode. He said that he opened one of these 360 savings accounts when rates were rising during a pandemic. But he missed out on the advertised higher interest rates because he didn't understand that you had to, like, go in and change your accounts. He wrote. Anyhow, hopefully the Capital One execs and the Trump administration are enjoying some wine and cheese on a yacht somewhere and laughing it up. Maybe drinking some of these High Noons.

[E]

Yeah.

[D]

Anyway, thanks Tim. We really appreciate the note. Listeners, let us know how you're sort of experiencing the economy if you've got a personal economic indicator, because frankly, talking about GDP is no fun. But talking about the personal the Restroom Cleanliness indicator, I think there's something there.

[E]

Although I did have a lot of fun talking with Ken Rogoff about gdp. What's more fun than that?

[D]

All right, that's fair. Everybody'[e-mail] that's everybody's with an slumberg.net also keep the reviews coming. We've seen a lot of them and they're awesome. And don't worry poetry fans out there. We will be back with haikus very soon.

[E]

This show is produced by Stacey Wong. Magnus Henriksen is our supervising producer, Amy Keen is our editor and Brendan Francis Newnham is our Executive producer. We get engineering from Blake Maples and Dave Purcell. Fact Checks Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts. Special thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin and Maria Ling. If you have a minute, please rate and review the show. It means a lot to us. And if you have a story that should be our business, send us an email. Everybody's loomberg.net that is everybody's with an slumberg.net thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.

[A]

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