Techtopia with Chitra Ragavan

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https://media.blubrry.com/whenitmattered/ins.blubrry.com/whenitmattered/Techtopia_24_RD1.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS “Accountants with guns” — These are the special agents of the Criminal Investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service. There’s 2,000 of them. And they have not only plenty of firepower, but they’re also armed with the sole mandate across the US Government to investigate violations of federal tax laws and related crimes.   For more than a century,  CI special agents have worked quietly across 21 field offices and 11 foreign countries, on investigations of massive scale and complexity, seizing billions of dollars in assets.  Criminal Investigation has played an outsize role in some of the biggest, most fascinating criminal tax cases of our time. From taking down legendary bootlegger, Al Capone, and investigating the Lindbergh baby kidnapping — to cryptocurrency crimes and most recently — bringing the hammer down on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs for sanctions violations via the Justice Department’s Kleptocracy Task Force,  I’m delighted to have as my guest today, James Robnett, Deputy Chief of IRS Criminal Investigation to tell us more about the amazing work that he and his team are doing.

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https://media.blubrry.com/techtopiawithchitraragavan/ins.blubrry.com/techtopiawithchitraragavan/Techtopia_23_RD1.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS Welcome to the final episode of Season 1 of Techtopia! I thought it would be appropriate to end the year as we began it, talking about Covid-19 and its pernicious impact on our lives, psyche, and the healthcare system at large. Hard as it may seem to imagine, we’re now entering year three of COVID-19 with a new variant, Omicron, upending lives globally. Two great guests join me in this episode to discuss our year in health or lack thereof and looking ahead to 2022. They are Dr. Robert Pearl and Jeremy Corr, co-hosts of two great podcasts: Fixing Healthcare, and Coronavirus: The Truth. Jeremy Corr is also the CEO of Executive Podcast Solutions and as many of you know, produces both my podcasts, Techtopia and When It Mattered. And Dr. Pearl is the former CEO of Kaiser Permanente Medical Group. He is currently both practicing and teaching at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His new book is, “Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors & Patients” and all proceeds from his books go to Doctors Without Borders. 

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https://media.blubrry.com/techtopiawithchitraragavan/ins.blubrry.com/techtopiawithchitraragavan/Techtopia_22_RD1.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS Jeffrey Epstein never faced the consequences for allegedly trafficking dozens of girls, some as young as age 14, and engaging in sex acts with them. He committed suicide in jail 35 days after he was arrested, avoiding a trial and potentially, half a century in prison for his evil actions. Now, however, more than two years later, at the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, Epstein’s former lover, and alleged enabler, Ghislaine Maxwell is on trial for aiding and abetting Epstein in satisfying his unmitigated sexual appetite for and exploitation of vulnerable girls. Prosecutors allege that Ghislaine Maxwell was at the heart of the trafficking conspiracy that Epstein was accused of carrying out both in his tony Manhattan townhouse and luxurious Palm Beach estate. Maxwell’s lawyers say that she is simply the proverbial fall guy for Epstein’s actions. The trial is casting a lens on the tragic world of human trafficking and how wealthy powerful people can engage, often over decades, in these crimes and escape seemingly with impunity. My guest this week to talk about the Ghislaine Maxwell trial and what it teaches us about the state of human trafficking and the role of technology is Anjana Rajan, the Chief Technology Officer of Polaris, an NGO leading a data-driven social justice movement to fight human trafficking. My former colleague at Palantir Technologies, Rajan’s expertise is applying cryptography to human rights and national security issues. She’s the former Chief Technology Officer of Callisto, a nonprofit that builds advanced cryptographic technology to combat sexual assault. Rajan has testified before Congress as an expert witness to speak about ways technology can protect survivors and victims of human trafficking. Related Episodes: Techtopia, Ep. 8: How Polaris is Fighting Q-Anon in its Use of Human Trafficking Disinformation Campaigns/Anjana Rajan, CTO, Polaris. Techtopia, Ep. 5: Technology has given women a powerful voice in the alt-right movement / Seyward Darby, Author, Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism.

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https://media.blubrry.com/techtopiawithchitraragavan/ins.blubrry.com/techtopiawithchitraragavan/Techtopia_21_RD1.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS The world is engaged in a new form of war — this one centered around the technology called artificial intelligence — which, put simply — is the science and art of making machines more human. But at what cost? The race to dominate in Artificial Intelligence, also known as the global AI arms race has deep implications for how our society evolves in the decades to come and raises many troubling questions about privacy, civil liberties, and inherent biases transferred from human to machine and back to humans again.  I really enjoyed this deep conversation about the current state and future of AI with one of my favorite guests and former Palantir colleague, Courtney Bowman. He is the Director of Privacy and Civil Liberties Engineering at Palantir. Bowman’s work addresses complex issues at the intersection of policy, law, technology, ethics, and social norms. Bowman has worked closely with the U.S. government and governments around the world to address the issues around the collection and analysis of COVID-19 pandemic data. And he has been thinking and writing about the challenges around the global AI Arms race.

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https://media.blubrry.com/techtopiawithchitraragavan/ins.blubrry.com/techtopiawithchitraragavan/Techtopia_20_RD1.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been on the forefront of some of the biggest technological innovations in history. At the same time, the so-called, defense industrial complex — that is, DoD, in cahoots with the big legacy defense contractors or the so-called “Beltway Bandits” —  have also built  some of the most expensive, bloated, and bungled technologies known to man. But now, increasingly, the Department of Defense is turning to lean, agile, and innovative software companies to build out its pipeline with dual-use technologies,  acting very much like venture capitalists to find and nurture the best of the best in startup technology. Here to talk about how the military is on the cusp of a new wave of technological innovation are three great guests: Daniel Borkhus is the Co-Founder and CEO of Holos, A virtual reality content management system. Borkhus is a former college football player, Facebook Hackathon Winner, and participant in Techstars Space 2020. Jeremy Neilson is a U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant. He serves as the Acting Base, and F-35, Training Manager, at  Edwards Air Force Base, California. Sgt. Neilson is the primary advisor to Edwards Air Force Base, on bringing advanced technologies into the military pipeline through AFWERX, the innovation efforts related to Air Force Instructional Systems Design. And James Boyd, is a former special forces soldier, Palantir engineer, and now CEO and co-founder of Adyton. That’s a veteran-owned, venture-backed software company bringing mobile technology to the Department of Defense. Last year, Adyton launched Mustr, a mobile personnel accountability system which has been used to keep more than 8000 DoD personnel safe throughout the pandemic.