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- [00:00]
A
Welcome, everyone. This is Gabriel Custodiet. I can't believe it. It's been one year, one year since I created escapethetechnocracy.com, the online shop, the privacy tutorial series, what has expanded into an entire array of products on escapethetechnocracy.com now, what started this in June 27, 2024, one year ago. Why did I create this? Well, you've been listening to this show, I hope, since the beginning. Watchmen Privacy. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do more than just the podcast. I wanted to be able to create even more content. And I would get so many emails from people in the far reaches of the Internet and direct messages and all the rest. People asking me questions all the time, how do I lock down my phone, how do I use Tor, all these sorts of things. And I finally decided to put together what I considered to be the comprehensive digital privacy tutorial series out there. And I called it escapethetechnocracy.com and it just grew, it was a hit. And it just led into a number of other products. And so now as I look at the shop here In June of 2025, one year later, we have products on AI, we have products on South Dakota Nomad residency preparedness. It's a whole phenomenon at this point. And so we want to thank you for your support over the years. And, you know, Escape the Technocracy, just like Watchmen, Privacy was born out of the same distaste that I had at the array of privacy influencers out there. I've listened to them all, I've watched them all. Some of you will send me a message, oh yeah, but what about this person? Yeah, I'm familiar with that person. I listen to their stuff, I listen to their 10 minute videos. And I'm disappointed for one reason or another, whether they are not mentioning something like Monero because they're paid out by another cryptocurrency or whatever the case may be. But I'm disappointed in some capacity with each of them. And, you know, anybody out there can criticize. There's this whole group of people as well who are just complaining about the problems out there. I never wanted to be one to complain about the problems. My goal with Watchmen Privacy and Escape the Technocracy was to show you, to show you right over my shoulder on the computer screen as I'm doing all these things in our tutorials on Escape the Technocracy. The solutions, they're right there, they're right in front of you. They're easier than you think. And I want to show you not just a 10 minute video about this and that. I want to show you how it fits into your life, how you can add it to your daily routine. And that's what people love about this brand. And that's what I'm excited to continue producing with Escape the Technocracy. And so I've been very pleased throughout this journey to be joined by Urban and Urban. What made you interested in becoming involved in Escape the Technocracy? What is it about it?
- [02:50]
B
I always had in me the idea of helping people to gain more privacy in my life. I've done a lot of charity work to help people in different ways. And when you pitched to me the idea of ett, we knew each other already. What I liked with your brand is how radically different from your typical influencer. You are not afraid to speak about topics that, frankly speaking, not many people speak. I still remember watching your video, you know, in defense of piracy and you were arguing, you know, if you buy the DVD right, you should be allowed to also have a backup of it, you know. Now the way you do the backup is, you know, to your discretion. But not many people speak in this way, you know, and also sometimes it's hard topic to, to, to talk about and you are not afraid. And you had like many, many, many podcast episodes that were similar in the fact that they were challenging the status quo.
- [04:00]
A
And I'm so grateful that you're here, Urban. Your knowledge has been invaluable. You've only made Escape the Technocracy that much better. I think people can see the effort that we both poured into this. And so we're going to, we're announcing a sale for the one year anniversary of Escape the Technocracy. We're announcing a sale and you can go right now, go to escapethetechnocracy.com there's a sale, 25% off almost everything on the store and we have some other little sale quirks that we're going to mention, so please stay tuned and we're just going to spend the next bit of time also just talking a little bit about what has changed, what you can purchase now on the shop that you couldn't just one year ago. So just getting into the sale details, As I said, 25% off everything in the shop and you don't need a coupon code. You can just go to escapethetechnocracy.com and, and get 25% off most of the products there. If you are a watchman's Torch Premium newsletter subscriber. And I hope that every one of you listening will become one. If you're a Watchman's Torch newsletter subscriber, definitely check the latest issue. There's a coupon code there for 45% off a single item in the shop. And because you know us at Escape the Technocracy, we don't really do serious drm. We're not tracking you. So if you go and buy the Watchman's Torch newsletter right now, you will see that you have access to that coupon code as well. So just a little hint there. Now if you are subscribed to our free newsletter, please also check the latest email. You have a special coupon discount there as well. So Watchman's Torch newsletter subscribers and free newsletter subscribers, definitely check your email for an extra little discount. And of course, everybody listening. 25% off just about every product on Escape the Technocracy. The sale will end on July 4th, so make sure to act now. Okay, so that's the basic details of the sale, but that's not all. We actually have some other. We also have some other exclusive offers, but you're going to have to listen to the rest of the episode to figure them out. And by the way, I didn't tell you this, Urban, but I have some free $100 discounts to give out at some point in this episode. So that's just one thing for people to stay tuned. Okay, so let's just talk a little bit about our journey here on Escape the Technocracy. Urban. It's a year later. We have a dozen plus products available. We started off with just one, but let's start with that core demographic. The people who purchased the Escape the Technocracy video course where we tell you how to install Linux, we show you how to use your VPNs and your Tor and escape the technocratic food system and all the other things. As part of that original base course that has expanded to eight videos, it is now we're pleased to announce getting a new module. Tell us a little bit about this new module in our Escape the Technocracy video course.
- [06:46]
B
Yes. So this is as, as you said, this is the core. This is the original one. This was the only one that was, you know, on the homepage a year ago. We are releasing a brand new module and some of you might have already had a sneak peek because it's already uploaded. It's about 3D printing and it's an introduction to 3D printing. And we believe 3D printing is one of the big ways to escape the current, you know, technocratic system that we, we are all living in, no matter the continent or the country that you.
- [07:25]
A
Are in, this 3D printing module was exceptional. Now what are the sorts of things that people could do with a 3D printer as we show them in this module?
- [07:33]
B
Yeah, so it's, it's a very, it's a very vast topic. And the thing that you need to understand is that there is two things behind 3D printing. There is the 3D printing itself, which is manufacturing something, and then there is designing a piece to be manufactured. And those are different things. Now typically your YouTube influencer, they will either only focus on one and never mention the other, or they will kind of mix the two, which makes it kind of confusing. Now what we did is we assume you had no knowledge of how to design something, right? So you just know how to use the printer, how do you Access object to 3D print, how do you download them, how do you place them, how do you set them up, et cetera, to then get the physical shape out of the printer? So this is the focus of this course. So it's really beginner friendly, beginner easy. And to be fair, even the people who know how to manufacture things, it's much easier if you have someone who did it for you and then you just use their model. So that is the focus of this, of this module. Sorry. And if people enjoy, and we see that this works quite good, I think you hinted it that you might do a full course on it later on.
- [08:55]
A
We've been 3D printing for many years now and we know a lot of the ins and outs and a lot of this comes out in this module. Again, that is a new module for all our people who supported us from day one. That's free for you. Okay. You get all the updates from these courses. So log in, go to, go to your Escape the Technocracy video course and check, check out this ninth module on Introduction to 3D Printing. And if you are new, by all means go purchase this for 25% off until July 4th. So just covering a few of our other products over the last year, Urban, we have our AI Resistance course. This was maybe the one I was most excited to do. We show the ins and outs of what is AI, how do you use it, what are the privacy consequences and how can we uncensor it, how can we jailbreak it and how can we use it for imagery and text and coding. And in fact you had a spin off of this course as well, showing People how to make a video game using AI. What were, what were the AI courses like for you?
- [09:51]
B
You know, it's very controversial AI and some people love it, some people hate it. Some people want to have the God encompassing AI, which if you ask me is kind of weird. But then you, you're left in the fog of war and you do not have a clarity like what to think of this. Is it going to be a revolution and what can you use it for without necessarily being overly enthusiastic and wanting to worship it? The goal of the course was to be optimistic but slightly skeptical of it. And I think this was a good job that was achieved because this is a course that you can apply in many, many different ways. And we try to show you things that are unconventional. Now the challenge with AI is that it moves very fast. And we already updated this course a few times. And we also wanted to show you that you can be productive and all the influencer out there, I mean, you know, Gabriel, you know me, we don't really like about, you know, the typical influencers. They will, you know, they do this hustling and this AI hustling culture and make AI work for you and all of this. And to be fair, 90% of it is garbage. Right. We choose creating a video game because it's an easy enough target to do. Lots of people dream about making their own video games. Current video games are, frankly speaking, garbage. They're all the same. They reuse the same asset, they look the same, they are all super safe. And we want to empower people to create their own and do not have to worry about all sorts of extra things, you know. So this is why the two of them were kind of released and created together. To empower you to use the tool the way you want to answer uncensored and to create the things that you would like to see.
- [12:03]
A
Absolutely. And we're getting feedback from that all the time. Somebody recently said, hey, they felt empowered to create their own HTML website using AI. So that is great to see.
- [12:12]
B
Yeah, of course. I mean, you can easily. I just want to add, like, we chose video game because it's kind of fun and we bought like video games. But you can easily adapt it to making your own website, making your blog, making your, making a new recipe. It could be really anything.
- [12:29]
A
Now, moving along here, I have a course on South Dakota residency. Now, if you're an American and you're a privacy seeker and you're willing to, you know, basically uproot and move somewhere else, South Dakota, the South Dakota route is A is really the route that you should be taking. So I created this alongside Dallas, who is an expert in South Dakota residency. And basically I walk you from start to finish. Five hours of exquisite detail about how to become a nomad resident of South Dakota. I have a module on being a ghost nomad. Show you a little bit about how to create an LLC in South Dakota and otherwise get really comfortable using jurisdictional arbitrage to seek more freedom. There are a lot of people talking about things like digital tools and I mean that's fun, but at the end of the day it's not really, it's not really a game changer. Having a new jurisdiction, a new legal jurisdiction, that is a game changer. And that's what I show you in the South Dakota residency guide. Urban, talk about our bitcoin course. This is a course that has a ton of modules in there. We put a lot of work in there. What does that bitcoin course mean to you, especially as we've updated it over the last many months?
- [13:38]
B
Yeah, the bitcoin course is one of the most complicated course I ever advised. It was really, really hard. But I think, you know, it's. It's your job, Gabriel, to digest all of this information and to turn it into, into a course that people can easily follow. What I think is very different is we are not afraid to talk about the danger and to show you when it goes horribly wrong. There is an entire section about how people lose their bitcoin and we go in a very in depth discussion to explain all the ways we could think and we encountered victims and people who lost tons of money like this and we just like put all of them together into one presentation for you. And that alone is in my opinion worth buying the course. Because you know, if you don't know all of those things, you might end up losing lots and lots of money. And here's the thing, of course it evolved and of course you have new techniques and new things and this is why this is one of the module that every few months we revisit and we add few more things that we discovered other ways that people lose their bitcoin. So that is one of the thing that makes this course worth, in my opinion, excellent course.
- [15:08]
A
If you're interested in any aspect of bitcoin, trying to make it more private or just better sovereignty running your own node. It's really a comprehensive A to Z bitcoin course. A lot of love and attention went into that one. And you know what, Urban? Some people haven't got that one yet because of the price. Well, I'll tell you what, with the 25% discount and maybe an additional discount that you have sitting in your email inbox right now, it's time, it's time for a lot of you to make that purchase and get that crucial information you need to update and upgrade your Bitcoin security and privacy at this point. Urban Speaking of discounts, I'm going to reel off a discount code and here's the way it works. This will work two times. So two different people will be able to use this discount code and they are going to get $100 off their order in addition to whatever other discount is there. So it's a pretty good discount, right? And the discount code is 9ZANNBV, so good luck to the first people who get there. Now, Urban, just moving along because there's so many other things that we've created over the last year and I also want to say to people, a couple months ago we had an episode where we said, listen, we, we're looking for people to step up and support us so that we can do this full time. And I don't want to be one of these people who's always talking about, oh, we don't have, you know, we don't have enough funding and just keep people going on so that they keep giving us money. I don't want to be that kind of person. I do want to say that we were very thankful for the people who did step up. It has allowed us to continue for now and as long as we have some consistency, I feel very confident in the direction that we're going. So I want to say thank you to the people in the last couple of months who have stepped up. So thank you to all of you out there. Now, there's a number of other things that we've created over the last year, Urban. We have our how to evade SIM swap scams, our different seed phrase bundles, and we also have a hack proof course. Tell us a little bit about the behind the scenes of creating one of those.
- [17:08]
B
The most interesting one was probably the Khipu, because I was reading an ancient book written in the 18th century about South America.
- [17:20]
A
And that one's called, by the way, the El Dorado Cipher toolkit.
- [17:23]
B
Yes, yes. This is how it's named. And the Incas, they were a fascinating civilization. They were kind of the equivalent of the Roman Empire in South America, but they had no writing records, or at least not as we know. What they used instead is something called the Khipu, which is an encoded knots and string and each knot and each string means something different. And when I was reading about this, I was like, this is cool, I want to build one myself. So after chatting with you, we decided would it be possible to hide a bitcoin seed phrase in one so that you make it hidden In a way, if you look at it, it could be hanging in your living room and it's really your bitcoin seed, but nobody would really know what it is. This was very interesting and also much more challenging than we anticipated because there is a lot of things that can go wrong and especially with backups is like backup, backup, backup. This is the one thing that you should always do. You should make tons of copy of things. And this was a challenge because you have to think about all the way people can F it up. But it was interesting and spent quite some time reading about the encoding of those ancient traditional record keeping device. It's basically the Excel spreadsheet of the Incas. Also, as a funny thing, we all know AI is woke, right? So then I said once to ChatGPT, oh, it looks like the Khipu is an ancient Excel. It's basically an Excel spreadsheet. And ChatGPT was like, how dare you. The Incas were noble warriors and amazing people from South America and et cetera, et cetera.
- [19:23]
A
Don't apply your western stuff to their history.
- [19:26]
B
Yeah. And then I said, yeah, I agree with you. It's amazing that they made something similar to Excel, you know, so many centuries ago. And then ChatGPT was like, oh, yes, you're, of course you're correct, Herman, that this is indeed a testimony to the genius. I just find weird how wokeism sometimes just like erase completely, you know, indigenous culture because it thinks it's, I don't know, racist or some weird things like this. Anyway, so this was, yeah, one of the most exotic thing that I ever did in my life. And by the way, I will tease people a bit. We are aware of the weakness of this. We know you can just toss it in a fire and it's going to burn. We know it's a very simple thing, but we have something planned for this and we are going to announce more in the coming weeks or months. But we have heard your criticism and we, we are going to do something a bit comical with this. Yeah, stay tuned. But it's not part of this anniversary. It will be something later on.
- [20:35]
A
What I really enjoyed is just when we had an idea and in your case, the El Dorado cipher kit, the Khipu to store your bitcoin seed phrase so that it's not this highly suspicious. Oh, here's this titanium seed phrase that's just sticking out. We just went for it and we created these awesome little tools and products and information that we don't see other people doing. And I think Urban, because we're. My motto has always been, and I stole this from a favorite magazine from the past. Make no compromise with the public taste. And when you are marching to your own drumbeat and you're not paying attention really to what other. The other privacy influencers are doing to, you know, you're not dependent on their thinking, you can come up with some really crazy creative stuff. And that's what you did with the El Dorado toolkit. Definitely encourage people who are interested in bitcoin pick up that entire bundle, the Invisible seed backup bundle, during the sale. That's going to be very affordable. So definitely add that to your cart if you're interested at all. Not just in bitcoin, but in cryptocurrency, generally speaking. The only other big thing I would say, Urban, is that we have these. Definitely this is a great time to get our Watchman's Torch newsletter. If you're not subscribed, that's where a lot of our attention is going these days. We're writing all sorts of interesting articles on recently on drones, OSINT internationalization, hosting your website on Tor. That is a wealth of information. I hope, Urban, that every single person listening will eventually become a Watchman's Torch newsletter subscriber. That is the best way. And look, if you were subscribed to the Watchman's Torch newsletter and you have that discount code that we mentioned, you may have paid for the newsletter itself just right there. So all the more reason to be signed up for that. Now, in addition to that, the last kind of category of things we have right now on the story is the Steven Harris courses. And Steven Harris is a fantastic guy. What did you get? Because I know that this was your first time encountering those courses in the last few months. What is your impression of Stephen Harrison? And how do you feel like that complements Escape the Technocracy?
- [22:39]
B
The first, most noticeable thing is my phone is not running out of energy anymore. And I know it sounds like a joke, but recently I had some challenging time in my life. There was some issues and lots of basically very expensive stuff had to be done to fix things. And we had a bunch of friends and family helping to fix things. And people were complaining, oh, I don't have enough power on my phone and stuff. And for me, since I watched those video, I always have enough power on my phone and, and there are like so many simple tricks that you can use and like not all USB cables and charger are created equal. And like, there are so many details like this, but if you get everything correctly, you will basically have almost always, you know, your phone charge. And this might sound funny, but, you know, it's like your phone sometimes is the difference between life and death. And starting your adventure with a phone that is charged and a well equipped backpack that is going to make you much further than if you are halfway there. What's also kind of ironic and scary is that when we started doing this, we were anticipating, you know, that tension would arise probably from the Ukrainian war. And in the past week, basically today that we record, USA has dropped bunker buster bombs over some Iranian nuclear facility. And I never expected our courses to be super relevant super quickly. That is quite shocking to see everything unfolding right now in the world. And I also see those videos that we were reviewing that now suddenly you could have to take your bag and run out. And it doesn't have to be total apocalypse. Could be much more simple. You could have power outage like in Portugal and Spain a few months ago. You could have what is happening now in Israel and Iran and Palestine. It doesn't matter on which side you are, you know, you're still suffering from all the bombardment and missiles and things like this. So yeah, it was scary to like see all of this unfolding in real time. You also need to be humble. It's a course that will deeply humble you. And if you go with the typical approach of, you know, being a petulant child, that is not going to work. You have to, as Mythbuster said, you know, I'm swapping your reality with mine. And this is what Steven Harris is doing with your mind because you have learned all the garbage from the YouTube influencer, the preppers, what you think is true. And then at the end of the day, he's trying to like, he loves you. He deeply loves people and he wants them to come back home safe for their family, their friends, their wives, their husband, their child, their parents. And he wants to make sure that you have the good information. Now, we don't always agree with him, I have to say we had some interesting debate about, but we think the value of the knowledge that he gives is world class and his credential speaks to it.
- [26:25]
A
And we have to say that he loves people because it's not Always obvious, right? Because he's out here yelling. And I've seen him in person bring people to tears. But he's always. He's like, he's hardcore. Like, that's the thing about him is that he's relentless. He's hardcore. I remember the first time, like I was listening to him the first time I met him. He started talking about how to fight off Somali pirates and what weapons you'd be using. And he started talking about mining, how he's mining bitcoin in a basement. And he starts talking about private military corporations. A lot of the. And he knew a lot of the people who, who ran these things and how they operate. And then he pulls out of his, you know, his jacket, his tourniquet is like, here, let me show you how this works. And then he splashed water on me and he said, now imagine that was petrol. And now I'm going to say, I'm going to throw a match on you right now if you don't tell me your seed phrase. Basically making the point that, you know, the $5 wrench attack is. Is a very real thing. And then he pulls out a giant ring of keys and he says, look, with these keys I can get water from any spout at any gas station in the country. And he has this giant thing of keys just for. Just for water. Like, this guy's super hardcore. And that's what I love about Stephen Harris. So we have two products from Stephen Harris right now, potentially more in the future. The Nuclear War Survivor Skills, which includes also a book and a video course, and the Shadow Loadout bundle, where he shows you what he would be recommending the extra little things for if you were being deployed in the military or if you're just an adventurous person. That is priceless information. Definitely consider picking up those during the sale.
- [27:56]
B
I can say. And Stephen, Aris, if you are listening to this episode, we love you. I. I'm applying some of his tips and tricks in my own scenario in life. And it's made night. And again, I'm not running out of phone battery anymore, you know.
- [28:18]
A
Well, and you're not running out because you know how angry he would be if you did. That's part of it, right?
- [28:23]
B
Oh, yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah.
- [28:25]
A
Okay. So at this point, Urban, let's talk about another way that people can benefit from this sale. So not only 25% off on the website, not only if you are a newsletter subscriber, check your email for an additional discount. We just gave away $200 discounts for the first two people to use that code Urban. For anybody who makes a purchase during this sale, we will be giving we will be selecting three people from everybody who has purchased during this event, this sale, and, and we will be reaching out to those three people for a free hour of consulting. Pretty cool. And this is the case regardless of what you purchase. You will have your name in the hat, so to speak, for a chance to win a free hour of consulting. And if you spend for every hundred dollars you spent, you will get an additional chance to enter your name into that hat, so to speak. So, so that's one more exciting opportunity that we're offering during this anniversary sale. We're really excited to that you have taken that you have joined us on this journey over the last year and we want to give back and reward you guys for your loyalty. So let's talk about the future for a moment. What's we've always been careful to be cautious about what we talk about that's upcoming. And you know, it's really difficult to run a website and we always want we would much prefer to just announce something and then it's available. But we will mention in this moment some of the things that we're considering and these are just ideas, but we're considering more stuff on 3D printing, self hosting. There's going to be more Stephen Harris, no doubt. And so these are just a few of the ideas that we're considering, a number of others as well. Of course, if you're following the newsletter, you're always going to get a taste before anybody about some of these things and you're going to get it in the most direct way possible. So definitely want to be subscribed to Watchman's Torch newsletter. If you have any ideas, don't worry if what you're looking for has not been mentioned. Again, these are just some preliminary ideas for us. But if you have an idea that you really feel strongly that we should be working on this product or that one, go ahead and email Me podcast watchman privacy.com you can reach out to me on Twitter, Telegram. Feel free to share a few ideas. Please be concise. Don't, you know, give me an entire essay or anything like that, but definitely reach out and we will consider these sorts of things as well. What you're doing by supporting us during the sale, it allows us to be independent. It allows us to talk about cryptocurrencies that we want because we're not being paid by another one. It allows us to be objective about how we talk to you and the products that we recommend and don't recommend. I don't know of many other people who are fully objective in that sense because they have no sponsors and they're not fully independent. So you know what to do. Escape the technocracy.com we have our sale until July 4th, and if you just absolutely have no means to purchase anything, well, please definitely consider at least sharing this episode. Share this sale with somebody that you do know who might be interested. And as always, please share the podcast as widely as you can with your friends, with your family, with a another podcaster so that we can be on their show. Please spread the word so we can help everybody out there escape the technocracy.
- [32:07]
B
Sam.