Between Two Nerds: Lights out!

Summary

Risky Bulletin: Between Two Nerds - "Lights out!"

Podcast: Risky Bulletin | Hosts: Tommy Wren & "The Gruk"
Date: January 12, 2026
Episode Theme:
A sharply analytical and wry exploration of the alleged U.S.-led cyber operation to cut power in Caracas during the extradition of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. The hosts dissect whether cyber tactics were involved, their significance to modern military actions, and what this means for the role of cyber in warfare going forward.

---

Episode Overview

Tommy Wren and the Gruk (Craig) kick off the year by tackling the high-drama military operation in Venezuela where the U.S. allegedly kidnapped Nicolás Maduro. The focus is on the news that cyber attacks may have played a critical role by shutting down power in Caracas, enabling the operation’s success. The episode digs into the plausibility, evidence, and wider implications for cyber operations as integral (or not) elements of modern warfare.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Incident: Did Cyber Attacks Turn Out Caracas’ Lights?

• Initial Reports ([01:10]):
  • Headline claims ("Trump suggests US use cyber attacks to turn off lights in Venezuela") spur debate about whether a U.S. cyber operation actually caused the capital blackout.
  • Despite dramatic coverage, evidence is thin and conflicting. There are local reports of both cyber-induced outages and physical sabotage (e.g., photos of a "shot out" substation).
• Insight:
  • Both hosts conclude it’s plausible there was a blend of cyber and physical attacks. The ambiguity might be intentional or due to the fog of such operations.

"So it's cyber being very connected is I think what we—"
— The Gruk [02:24]

2. The Role of Cyber Operations: Essential or Nice-to-Have?

• Debate on Necessity ([04:37]):

  • Both hosts believe cyber probably played a role but question if it was absolutely decisive.
  • The U.S. had long preparation time, means, and motivation—prime conditions for using cyber to disrupt infrastructure ([05:26]).
  • Key Quote:

    "Turning off power is absolutely something that cyber operations can do. Like it's being demonstrated.”
    — Tommy [04:56]

• Military Value ([06:25]):

  • Cyber fits the U.S. military's conceptual model of modern warfare: "turning off the lights" is an archetypal goal for cyberwar scenarios.
  • The Gruk: “Turning the lights off is sort of the flagship US idea of cyber war.” [06:25]
  • However, cyber is framed more as an enabler for special operations than as a hammer for large-scale war.

• Analogy: Cyber as a “garnish” or "mint sauce"—helpful and neat, but not necessarily the main ingredient ([13:31] - [13:56]).

3. Practicalities, Limitations, and Evolution of Cyber in Operations

• Operational Realism:
  • Cyber is best for temporary, non-destructive disruptions, aligning with the U.S.' goal not to permanently cripple infrastructure they may later have to rebuild ([10:24]).
  • Long lead-times and unpredictability make cyber unsuitable as a primary military tool, but optimal for precise, one-off operations ([11:34]).
• Historical Analogy:
  • Compares to past attempts like using specialized bombs to short-circuit power (Iraq), which often failed. Cyber is arguably more reliable for such temporary effects ([12:17]-[13:14]).

4. Integration and Institutionalization of Cyber

• Turning Point? ([16:18] - [17:29]):
  • The Politico headline claims a “turning point for US Cyber warfare.” Hosts agree—but primarily in terms of perception and integration, not capabilities:
    • Cyber now has “a seat at the planning table” ([18:07]).
    • Future operations will always discuss some cyber role, even if limited.
• Quote:

  “I think it is a turning point in terms of...from now on, someone will say something about cyber and it'll just be part of the operation.”
  — Tommy [16:55]

5. Community & Industry Reflections

• Changing Vibes Post-Ukraine ([18:53]-[21:45]):
  • Russian cyber underperformance in Ukraine led to doubt and even existential angst among cyber professionals.
  • This successful (U.S.) operation helps restore faith: "we're back, baby" ([20:49]).
  • Recognizes cyber's role as enabler rather than a silver bullet weapon.
• Gartner Hype Cycle Analogy:
  • Cyber’s journey: past the “peak of inflated expectations," through a “trough of disillusionment,” and now ascending the “slope of enlightenment” ([21:52], [27:28]).

6. Special Operations & Cyber: A Natural Match

• Spec Ops Book Analogy ([23:51]-[27:28]):
  • The hosts compare cyber operations to the classic attributes of successful special forces missions: secrecy, rehearsed tactics, preparation, rapid execution, and surprise.
  • Both domains emphasize intense prep and precision over brute force.
  • Gruk: "I think that those things that make hacking successful and that make special operations successful mean that they are a good match." [26:16]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Real Value of Cyber in the Operation:

  “Was this [cyber] your sort of lamb shank in the middle or...the little sprig of parsnip that you put on top? Like a little cyber garnish?”
  — Tommy [13:31]

• Military Bureaucracy Reality:

  “If you are a military command like Cybercom...you want to make sure that you have your hat in the ring visibly, that you are taking part...”
  — The Gruk [14:10]

• On Trump’s Comments About the Operation:

  “It was dark. The lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have. It was dark and it was deadly.”
  — Tommy quoting Trump [04:01]

• Cyber’s Place in Future Operations:

  "From every operation...from now on, someone will say something about cyber and it'll just be part of the operation.”
  — Tommy [16:55]

• The Gruk sums up the long view:

  “This is literally the only time that turning off the grid makes sense. Right, I've said it, I'll admit.”
  — The Gruk [11:34]

• On the Return of Optimism in Cyber Circles:

  “And we're back, baby.”
  — Tommy [20:49]

---

Key Timestamps

• 01:10: Media claims of U.S. cyber blackout in Venezuela, discussion of supporting evidence
• 04:01: Trump’s remarks fueling speculation on use of cyber
• 06:25: The symbolic significance of “turning off the lights” as cyberwarfare
• 10:24: Preference for cyber as non-destructive disruption, not infrastructure demolition
• 13:31: “Cyber garnish”—debating importance vs. necessity
• 16:18: Discussion of headlines labeling this a turning point for U.S. cyber operations
• 18:07: Cyber gets “a seat at the planning table”
• 20:49: Cyber experts’ morale boost—“we’re back, baby”
• 23:51: Parallels drawn between cyber ops and classic special operations
• 27:28: “Slope of enlightenment”: cyber finds its appropriate role

---

Conclusion & Takeaways

This detailed, insightful, and tongue-in-cheek episode positions the alleged US cyber blackout in Venezuela as an inflection point—not because cyber became decisive, but because it proved itself a valued, integrated enabler in the toolbox of modern special operations. For listeners, the takeaway is less about the technology and more about institutional change: cyber is officially out of the shadows, always on the mission planning menu, even if it’s often just the “mint sauce.” The evolving narrative in the security community reflects a maturing understanding of what cyber can and cannot do—and when it really shines.

---

Transcript

[A]

Hello, everyone. This is Tommy Wren and I'm here with the GRUK for the first BTN of the year. G', Day, Grok, how are you?

[B]

Good day, Tom. Finding yourself. Happy New Year, by the way.

[A]

Thanks. I'm well. This week's edition is brought to you by Prowler, the open source cloud security management company. Find [e-mail] so, Grok, over the Christmas New Year's break, probably the biggest news was that the U.S. i guess they basically kidnapped Nicolas Maduro, who is the. Is he the president or the leader of Venezuela? There was a pretty complex military operation to snatch him from. I believe it was a military base in Caracas, which is the capital of Venezuela. Now the interesting thing from our point of view is that there's.

[B]

There was computers involved.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

All those 150 airplanes, they had computers in them. Let's talk about the critical factor then.

[A]

So the thing that caught my eye, the news I saw was this headline. Trump suggests US use cyber attacks to turn off lights in Venezuela during strikes. So that's the headline in Politico. And the. The New York Times says that the operation began with a cyber operation that cut power to large swaths of Caracas, shrouding the city in darkness to allow the planes, drones and helicopters to approach undetected. So I love the drama that they've sort of managed to generate there.

[B]

So I wonder if it's. If it was cyber or just a regular blackout.

[A]

Well, so could you tell? And so the. There's a tweet from. Or Blue sky post, whatever, from Oleg Shakarov, who is a cyber person who often comments on Russian issues. But he links to a Venezuelan report that shows the Venezuelan power company saying, yes, US attacks did disrupt power. And then they've got a photo of a shot out substation where you can seal these holes.

[B]

So it's cyber being very connected is I think what we.

[A]

So that doesn't to me eliminate the possibility that cyber was also involved. Yeah, like, and like, who knows where the photo comes from? Like, I don't know, maybe you would want to make it look like they were shot out. But it also seems entirely plausible that there's a combination.

[B]

Why would there not be both?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, maybe.

[A]

Yep. Like the New York Times sentence seemed to me to be a bit thin in that it's not the street lights that stop cities from being attacked.

[B]

Well, Like helicopters and warplanes are not like thugs on the corner who can get scared away because it's a little bit bright outside, but who come out in droves now that the lights are off. Like it's.

[A]

Yeah. Now there's.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Also the possibility that that power outage disrupted, like real air defense systems and.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I, who knows? Maybe that's possible. I would wouldn't rule that.

[B]

Yeah, it would. There's probably sort of last line stuff which is, you know, a guy with a machine gun on a rooftop and if the lights go out and you can't see what he's shooting at, then makes life difficult. Yeah. And that's obviously useful when you have choppers going low and slow because they are vulnerable to a guy with the machine gun.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And some report I read somewhere, one of the choppers was hit or was fired at or something like that.

[B]

So, yeah, there was some slight damage to one chopper, but it was able to complete the mission without falling out of the sky, which is, you know.

[A]

Yep, yep. Now I'll just read what Trump said about it. It was dark. The lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have. It was dark and it was deadly. Trump said during a press conference about the operation. People have seized on that and said cyber was like, positive. Yeah, I, I guess there are other possibilities, like you could have insiders that you just pay to switch off lights. Now, we seem to be at this point pooh, poohing the idea, but I actually think that it probably did happen.

[B]

Right. Yes. I think that the evidence for it is thin, but the fact of it is probably very solid. I can imagine a world in which it didn't happen, but that seems less plausible on every particular than that it did happen.

[A]

So know, like the, the things I'm thinking of, they had a long lead time. Turning off power is absolutely something that cyber operations can do. Like it's being demonstrated. Like they've actually had maybe two terms worth of preparation in that Trump in his first term was trying different cyber operations. So I think there would have been a very long term effort to say, what is the critical infrastructure in Venezuela?

[B]

Yeah. What could we do?

[A]

What is in the realm of possibility?

[B]

So, yeah, so they, yeah. Like, even if they didn't look into it particularly seriously, they would have had a folder somewhere of like, here's what we did last time.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Here's everything we scanned. Here's everything we know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What's next?

[A]

Rather than starting from zero.

[B]

Right. And to be clear, even if they did start from zero in, if not January, then September or August, whenever they started shooting the, the speedboats, which, like, that would have been enough time. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. You know, and it also seems like they had the time, they almost certainly had the capability, because I don't expect Venezuela is a really robustly defended critical infrastructure. And once you've got those two, like all you need is the intent. And it's like, well, why would you not turn the lights off if you could?

[B]

Right. And I think this is, there's a couple things going in here. One of them is that turning the lights off is sort of the flagship US idea of cyber war. Right. It's, it's, it's what they lead with. Right. Like when, if they talk about like the cyber Pearl harbor, they go to the power grid. Right. They don't go to like public opinion before an election. That's not the thing they worry about. It's very much the, like, what if someone goes after our critical infrastructure? So this is absolutely, this goes to how they think about cyber war, about how you use cyber. Also, very, very long ago I was speaking to an American and I was doing my usual, you know, like, why would you ever want to turn off the grid? That's dumb. And they said, well, you know, let's say you had a helicopter pilot or a pilot who had been shot down and was stranded inside an enemy city, you would turn the lights off so the special forces could go in there and rescue them under cover of darkness. Yeah, I mean, yeah, okay, fine, but it's not a military war thing. It's like an enabler of an operation. That makes sense.

[A]

Yeah. What strikes me about that is that that's exactly what's happened here is they turned off the light. It's not a downed pilot, but they used the undercover of darkness, I guess, Special forces to recover a particular individual.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Now there would have been a lot of intelligence support as well, to have Maduro's pattern of life, where he was, what he does when, where. I'm sure SIGINT and cyber espionage played a role and human sources as well. So all of that would have been in the lead up and then you've got the capability and the. Well, it may not be like absolutely critical to turn off the lights. Like probably. I imagine they could have done it other ways.

[B]

Look, I'm pretty sure that if I was a chopper pilot and I was going into a place that I knew had Russian air defense systems in place and someone said, don't worry about it, you know, the NSA is going to use their computers and like, beep, boop, beep boop, and you'll be safe.

[A]

Cyber Command.

[B]

Yeah, I, I would not be super on board with that. But if they said, you know, NSA Cyber Command, they're going to go and they're going to be boop, beep boop. And we'll also have our growlers out doing their anti radar stuff, I'd be like, okay, fine, yeah. But like I can live with that.

[A]

Yeah. So the.

[B]

And I believe that's what happened.

[A]

You know, it's like, it seems like it's an important, an operation that's important enough that you would throw all the capabilities you had.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know, your standard warfare, electronic warfare, countermeasures.

[B]

Why hold back? There's not going to be another raid to steal Maduro.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Like it's. You don't need to, you don't need to save it for the next time instead.

[A]

Well, I mean the only reason you would save it is if you thought you were going to give away something that you wanted to save for something else. But I, I can't imagine what that would be.

[B]

Right. And Greenland, I don't think. Yeah, well, I was going to say like. See the thing is, I think that the capability is going to be so bespoke and tailored for that infrastructure. You know, the systems that they are using, whatever. Even if the implants and the tools leak, it's not going to be particularly useful because they won't be using that specific set of tooling again. That was. It would have been developed for this operation.

[A]

Yeah. So one of the things I was going to say is that they probably have other options to turn out the lights and one of them would be just to blow a whole stuff, lot of stuff up in this case. I'm not sure that I would really describe it as a theory of victory. But their plan at least is to install someone else who will maybe not install them but let someone else run the country who is.

[B]

They don't want to destroy infrastructure, they have to rebuild. Yeah, that's right.

[A]

It's like the business as usual theory. So yeah, a cyber attack actually makes a lot of sense as a temporary disruption.

[B]

I'm quite down on cyber as a pure military capability as a substitute for a kinetic option. It has a lot of things that make it sort of not good for that. Right. Like it has these long lead times, it's temporary. The effect is sort of hard to predict. Like it, it might last for days or it might last for hours. Who really knows? It might not work completely. It might only work for part of the target. These are not things that you want in a military capability because you Want something that's predictable and can be tasked and all this stuff. But all of those things are actually benefits or don't apply in this case. The long lead time. Yeah, you've got eight years, plenty of time. It's temporary. You need an hour, hour and a half. Right. Like it's perfect. It's actually a benefit, it's temporary.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So it's more a special forces or special operations type.

[B]

Yes, yeah, yeah. It's an enabler for an operation which is fine for like the beginning of a war where there's no friction to upset things. After the first few weeks the friction is built up and it's not possible to exploit this sort of thing. But in this case, where you just have an operation in isolation during peacetime exploitation is easy. So yeah, it's an ideal fit. This is literally the only time that turning off the grid makes sense. Right, I've said it, I'll admit.

[A]

So the. A long time ago we spoke about the invasion of Iraq. I think it was Iraq. And one of the things that the US used were these special bombs that were meant to disrupt electricity by spooling out a whole lot of carbon fiber or something. And they were meant to have the same type of effect, a short term disruption. But ironically it turns out that they didn't work that well because sometimes they started fires. And the. I guess the idea was that they would short a system and trip a circuit breaker.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then.

[B]

And what they found was that people had used like pennies, so sometimes the.

[A]

Substation would catch fire and be destroyed. And so in sort of as a comparison, let's assume that cyborg was used to switch off the lights. It seems to have been more effective in that they weren't a whole lot of destruction of electrical infrastructure permanently.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I guess the summary of all that discussion is that yes, we actually 100% believe that this is a useful application. I'm not convinced. Like where on the dial from nice to have to absolutely necessary or decisive.

[B]

Right. Yeah. It's like if you're making a raids Maduro meal like was. Was. This is cyber. You're sort of like lamb shank in the middle. Or is cyber like the, the little sprig of parsnip that you put on top? Like a little cyber garnish?

[A]

Yeah, I'm gonna say maybe slightly more than a garnish. Maybe one of the.

[B]

Maybe a mint sauce. A mint sauce of C. Yeah. It sort of adds flavor, but you could live without it if you had to.

[A]

That's Right. But without the Special Forces people in the helicopters, there's no meal.

[B]

There's no meal. I'd say one of the other reasons that I think cyber would be involved is that if you are a military command like Cybercom and there's a big military operation being conducted for the commander in chief, you want to make sure that you have your hat in the ring visibly, that you are taking part, that you're showing willing, like, even, even if it's not massively critical, even if you aren't a huge part of it, you want to make sure that you're there and that he knows that you're there because that's how you get funding next year.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like, it's.

[A]

Yeah. So I think that this Trump administration seems keen on offensive cyber. Like, several of the administration have talked about it, using it more. I think it's super interesting that Trump seemed to have hinted at it. And part of the reason I think it was more a garnish or a source than really decisive is that the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have. So Trump's talking about the skills and how special it is that they could even do it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I think if it was decisive, he would say. He would say it was decisive and that, you know, no other country could do this and it really, you know, turned the tables or whatever.

[B]

Yeah. So I think that that probably speaks to how close the head of cybercom is to his ear in making him aware that it happened. But even they aren't going to be foolish enough to say, like, it wouldn't have been possible without.

[A]

If the lights had been on.

[B]

If you, if you'd had to turn the lights out with Tomahawks instead of with cyber, it's just never would have worked. You know, that's bad.

[A]

So one of the other headlines that I thought was really interesting again from Politico, venezuela strike marks a turning point for US Cyber warfare. Now, I actually think that that's right, but not perhaps because of the reasons you would first think. So the headline sort of implies that it was decisive or it was a really key part.

[B]

Yeah. Cybercom has now arrived and they're, you know, they're, they're finally their own standalone air force type unit that has a full 1/5 of all operational capability. Like, they're, I don't think that that's new to the degree that it's happened, and I don't think it's changed from where they have been before. I guess, like it might be Right. But.

[A]

But I think it is a turning point in terms of. From every operation of this sort of. From now on, someone will say something about cyber and it'll just be part of the operation. Like it's.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And sometimes it'll be the garnish, maybe. I don't know how often, maybe exceptionally. Sometimes it'll be even the side dish at some point. I was gonna say sometimes it may be the main thing occasionally, which would be an exciting day for us. But I think that from now on, it'll be, you know, acknowledged as a part of any complex operation. There'll be a cyber role, and it's not so much that it's there at all that'll be significant. It'll be like, you know, to what extent?

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I think that's the term.

[B]

As an enabler or a shaper of the environment, how big a role did it play? Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Absolutely. It does seem like maybe the. The turning point is more about the integration with regular forces. Having now sort of gone through the process and learned how to do it. That might be more of what's going on than the. Like. I don't think the skills have changed and it hasn't sort of stepped up there. I think it's just more understood by other branches who are able to then see how it fits into the planning process and integrate it at that point.

[A]

As opposed to a. Yeah, it feels.

[B]

Like it's got an afterthought.

[A]

A seat at the planning table, maybe.

[B]

Right, right. Not at the kids table anymore.

[A]

I thought this might be.

[B]

Maybe we shouldn't record these things during lunchtime, so stop using food metaphors all the time.

[A]

Well, it may be lunchtime for you, but it's getting. We both agree that it's a sort of a bit of a turning point in a kind of political sense, in the way that the US at least will talk about it, that it's part of the planning process. But do you think that this will change the. Maybe public is the wrong word, but the cyber cognoscenti. Their view of cyber operations in warfare.

[B]

Right. Yeah. So I've definitely noticed a sort of a change in the overall vibe. Feelings of. Yeah, the vibe. Yeah. So, look, I've certainly sensed a change in the vibe. So after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was the sense that cyber didn't work because the airborne forces failed to capture Hostomel and the tanks failed to capture Kyiv.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Which, I mean, like, it doesn't really make any sense if you think about it. Like cyber had nothing to do with either of those things and they had nothing to do with cyber. But there's this real sense of like, oh my God, cyber doesn't work. This is terrible. We've all invested all this time, our careers are tied up in this and it's completely useless. What are we going to do? This is terrible. And then there sort of came this multi year effort of trying to explain the failure of Russian cyber without indicting cyber as a system overall. So there's a lot of, well, cyber would have worked if they just admire more of it. Or cyber doesn't work because the Russians do it wrong, unlike us, or any sort of, you know, like, no true Scotsman approach. And it seems like things have sort of normalized to a bit of like, okay, well, maybe we're not the biggest dog in the shed, but cyber is still useful. But I don't think that that sort of, that was in their hearts. Right. I think that that's sort of like a brave front that everyone was putting on, whereas they still had this niggling doubt of like, what if when push comes to shove and it turns out that we can't actually do anything useful. That seems to be gone. There seems to be this exuberance now from the cyber side of things. I don't think I pay very much this.

[A]

Yeah, I don't think I pay as much attention as you do to online discourse, but I get the same vibe that people, like, see cyber can be useful.

[B]

And we're back, baby.

[A]

And, and I saw somewhere someone saying that, you know, the, the, and I think I called them set pieces, where you've got time and space to plan and have a complex operation. Like that's where its role is. Yeah. And so it seems to sort of oscillate around.

[B]

Yeah, Well, I think that the ultimate problem is that cyber is very good, but it's not necessarily very good at emulating a kinetic capability. Like, it's very good at things that are not necessarily a great match for military stuff. But everyone's very invested in how can it be used as a military capability. And so when its weaknesses are shown up, then like, everyone gets really upset and depressed. And then when it's, you know, strengths are highlighted, everyone gets really, really happy again. And the truth is it's still like, it's, it's not a great military capability. It's good, but it's not great.

[A]

Like, it's, it's a, I mean, like.

[B]

It'S great at other things, but not this. Right, right.

[A]

I'm just thinking of the Gartner hype cycle, and it seems like we've passed through the peak of inflated expectations and the trough of disillusionment. We're gradually getting to the right place. Cyber is the. A minor source.

[B]

Yeah. So I think that that's actually a fair. Like, that's a fair place for cyber, is that there needs to be some level of moderation on, like, there's the. The cyber boosters who really put out this idea of, like, it's, you know, the big red button, you slap it and like, civilization ends. And I, I think that those people were the ones who were particularly disappointed when Russia invaded Ukraine and that didn't happen. And I think maybe they've gotten some wind in their sails again. But if there's a SWAT raid into a house and someone turns the lights off and then the SWAT raid succeeds, and they say that's because we turned the lights off as the critical part, I feel very much like that's where Cyprus. It's like it helped. It was good, but it probably wasn't the decisive factor. It's probably the SWAT team that gets a little bit more credit than the light flicker. Right? Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Well, yeah. I don't know. Like, my knowledge of SWAT raids is mostly from Hollywood movies, but it seems like when you've got those situations, they do just cut the power as a matter of course. Like, it's your right, like, default playbook. In the same way, I imagine that any complex military, I guess I'll call them a special operation in that you.

[B]

Which implies that you've got a special military operation.

[A]

Yeah. You've got the time and space to plan something complex.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Maybe it's not flicking the lights, but it would be, what. What can cyber operations contribute? And it'll be different depending upon the particular situation. Maybe you can do this. Maybe you can so do that.

[B]

Here's. Here's the thing is, I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but there's this book called Spec Ops and link in the description below. And I've always said that his description of how special operations succeed, like the, The. The factors of success are the exact same ones of why hacking succeeds. The things that you do have been practiced so that you do them by rote. You're not sort of guessing as you're going along that there's security in that you don't alert the target beforehand, that you know, you have secrecy, that you have purpose. Like, you're going in, you do your thing. Like you're not showing up and wandering around being like, okay, so what should we do next? It's very much mission and goal oriented. So he's got like all of these things that go into successful special operations. And cyber fits very well with those because those are the things that make cyber operations succeed. And so I think the fact that cyber marries very well with special operations in the real world is exactly what you'd expect because they're such close matches overall in terms of the deciding factors that make them a success and the way that they are prepared and operated. Like there's a lot of reconnaissance, there's a lot of planning and then when it actually happens, it's very quick. But before that there's, you know, all this prep that goes into it. And yeah, so my strong sense is that it does make sense for these things, but in a way only for these things. Right, right. Like it's not a good match for a general military sort of, you know, Battle of the Somme is not the sort of thing that cyber works well with. When it's multiple months of just hard slog, that's not a good cyber environment. Whereas this sort of two hour operation, perfect cyber.

[A]

Yeah. So the Delta, I think it was Delta Force part, the story is that they constructed a, you know, a model, well, a one to one model or a replica of the facility that they were storming. And so you can bet that there was also a cyber range for whatever the plan was that they would have practiced on.

[B]

And building a model and practicing on it is like that's standard special operations practice. A simple plan, carefully concealed, repeatedly and realistically rehearsed and executed with surprise. Speed and purpose, those are the decisive factors in special operations success. And I believe that those are the same things for a hacking operation. That it's the sort of, it's, it's straightforward, it's concealed, it's rehearsed, it's sort of verified to work. You know what it's going to do. It occurs like you do it with surprise, so they're not expecting it. You do it rapidly and you know what you're doing. You've got a sort of, you're mission focused. And I think that those, those things that make hacking successful and that make special operations successful mean that they are a good match. Right. And so I'm not at all surprised that it would, it would be a useful capability to add to a special operation. I just, I think that they're very much meant for each other, that they fill the same sort of roles. Right, right.

[A]

So I guess from the Gartner hype cycle point of view, we've passed the trough of disillusionment and the peak of inflated expectations. We're now on the slope of enlightenment.

[B]

Which is, surprisingly enough, we achieve by turning the lights on.

[A]

Thanks a lot, Craig.

[B]

Thanks a lot, Tom.