Change My Mind

A conversation with security researcher and free-software developer Matthew Garrett about who really controls the computer you own. We start with the Intel Management Engine and AMD's Platform Security Processor: the small, always-on processors beneath the operating system, and work through why so much firmware is closed source, whether that secrecy achieves any security, and what it would take to trust a CPU you can't audit. Along the way: coreboot and the limits of open firmware on x86, Boot Guard and Secure Boot and the difference between security and control, carrier-locked phones, DRM and why the Management Engine decrypts your Netflix stream, the economics of firmware-level malware and ransomware, and whether a fully sovereign modern machine is possible at all in 2026. This is the first episode of the 'Illuminating Firmware: Own It or Be Owned by It' series, subscribe for more. Chapters: 00:00 Intel Management Engine: The Hidden Computer 01:16 Why Firmware Is Closed Source 03:02 Cryptographic Signing and Boot Guard Vulnerabilities 04:05 Which Hardware Components Pose Risk? 05:47 Security Through Obscurity vs. Open Source 06:41 Why Firmware Leaks Haven’t Led to More Exploits 08:50 LLMs and the Future of Reverse Engineering 10:13 The Real Issue: Losing Control of Your Computer 11:21 Carrier Locks and Verizon’s Control 12:45 Boot Guard: Security vs. User Freedom 16:02 Does Boot Guard Prevent Installing Linux? 19:02 The Hardware Privilege Hierarchy 20:08 Intel AMT and the Management Engine’s Network Access 24:10 Can the Management Engine Access Your Encrypted Data? 27:03 IOMMUs, DMA, and Protecting System Memory 28:45 Can You Trust Intel? Malice vs. Incompetence 33:50 The Hollywood Movie Scenario: Realistic Threats 35:15 Firmware Malware and Real-World Attacks 39:16 User-Controlled Keys and Hardware Sovereignty 40:37 The Management Engine, DRM, and Netflix 45:33 Is a Fully Sovereign Modern Computer Possible? 48:10 Freedom vs. Convenience: Even Experts Make Trade-Offs

A conversation between Bayan Furutan and Alex Buxeda on whether an "ought" can be derived from an "is," whether free will exists, and what it would take to prove it doesn't. Alex argues, along Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky lines, that free will is an illusion: we are patterns of matter running a nested hierarchy of priors, from physics to biology to culture, and every choice is ruled by cause and effect. Awareness of the universe, on this view, collapses the is and the ought into one. Bayan holds free will as an axiom, accepted the way we accept that our senses reflect reality, and sets a high bar for disproving it: predict my behavior as reliably as we predict a planet's orbit. Between those poles the conversation ranges across the thermostat as the smallest unit of decision, natural selection and entropy, poker and game theory, the abortion debate as a case of "a spectrum matching a spectrum," the Mormons as a test of whether a false belief can still be fit, and whether you act as if you have agency, or watching yourself act? Chapters: 0:00 Can an ought be derived from an is? 1:51 The man hit by a car: same "is," different "oughts" 4:55 Every ought needs an "if": survival as the hidden premise 7:05 Paying back what it took to build you: entropy and natural selection 9:21 "What are you doing" vs. "why are you doing it" 11:53 Deriving the why from the what, and how bandwidth changes the answer 13:47 Co-evolution: black holes, universes, and turtles all the way down 16:16 Why criticism needs an alternative: the Enlightenment proposal 18:47 Free will as the real crux: is it required for an "ought"? 20:34 Hard determinism, Sam Harris, and "if you were Stalin" 22:15 Experience vs. proof: why Bayan holds free will as an axiom 27:43 Defining free will: what would non-free will even mean? 28:39 The thermostat as the smallest unit of decision 29:46 Is consciousness computational? Penrose and the counter 31:07 Poker, game theory, and modeling the other player 32:06 The real dividing line: can you act against your nature? 37:11 Zooming out: the lineage that never jumps into the street 40:19 Signal, noise, and why bigger samples reveal the laws of nature 42:04 Are you a set of instructions? The direct question 45:40 "Yes." Sapolsky and the nested hierarchy of priors 54:36 Diminishing returns toward 100%: chipping at the variance 1:00:07 A thought experiment: what correlation would settle it? 1:01:00 The god-of-the-gaps objection and spontaneous generation 1:03:43 Predictability across a lifetime: fetus, mid-20s, old age 1:07:16 At what point does free will emerge? The abortion parallel 1:10:42 A spectrum must be matched by a spectrum: the speeding-ticket model 1:18:17 Where does a human start having rights and obligations? 1:23:32 A reasonable hypothesis, but not proof: the high threshold 1:26:35 Markets, courts, and how truth is discovered collectively 1:30:11 The beehive: how a spectrum emerges from

I am joined by neuroscientist Karl Friston to discuss, from first principles, what trust is. The trust we put in others, and in our institutions, is a sociological feature emergent from biology. It is here that predictions first appear. This conversation inspired an article we co-wrote: ⁠https://schweizermonat.ch/trust-is-a-law-of-nature/ 0:00 What is trust, in active inference terms? 1:07 Trust in your own future: planning as inference 2:16 Confidence, precision, and the shape of a belief 3:45 Two ways to minimize surprise: seeking info vs. avoiding surprise 5:48 Epistemic trust: choosing where to get your news 6:24 Scale invariance: from eye movements to which institutions you trust 8:20 Trust as a meta-judgment of your past predictions 9:11 The statistician's view: estimating risk, not just reward 10:56 When second-order inference fails: hallucinations and neglect 12:50 Delusional institutions: the same mechanics in markets and geopolitics 13:45 Precision as attention: what you trust is what you attend to 14:56 Rediscovering natural selection from a different angle 17:20 Bayesian model selection is nature's way of selecting phenotypes 19:58 Why the free energy principle complies with itself 21:14 Donald Hoffman, mortal computation, and neuronal chauvinism 22:31 We are the substrate: predicting ourselves into existence 24:07 Everything is a hypothesis, including time and the self 25:10 Do we see truth? What can be ignored isn't true 26:13 There is no truth, only the best inference for me 27:33 Synchronization of chaos: coupling your brain to the world 28:45 A joint free energy solution: becoming mutually predictable 29:38 Aligned interests: why you trust the table, your liver, and me 31:52 Negative valence: trusting that a lion wants to eat you 32:47 Shorting the BBC: the cost of distrust 33:33 Fake news, epistemic trust, and the pillars of autocracy 34:15 Sharing a generative model: how we become predictable to each other 35:47 Defining yourself by the states you refuse to occupy 38:04 Is this source generated by someone like me? 38:36 Why echo chambers are Bayes-optimal until communities open 39:54 Too many choices: why it's awful for young people now 40:58 Friston: no phone, no social media, no awful uncertainty 41:15 Australia's under-16 social media ban, seen mathematically 42:06 Information like capital: who should handle how much 42:48 The pathology: social media attracts more capital when you lose 43:28 Markets are grown up, social media is pre-adolescent 44:11 Science as selection: theories as surviving hypotheses 44:35 Is religion "true"? The fitness of a simple generative model 46:03 Narrowing choice: why fewer options relieves angst 47:05 "You are your own existence proof" 48:07 Collapsing is and ought: first survive, then philosophize 49:08 "I am, therefore I think" 50:23 The relational aspect: no standalone measure of goodness 53:30 Hardware and software differ only in speed of change 54:33 The renormalization group: same rules at every scale 55:07 Separation of temporal scales: growing slow, learning fast 56:15 What we inherit is learnability, not a finished world model 57:40 Why foolishness was selected for: the reckless years 59:21 "Did evolution fool us?" The value of unsophisticated agents 1:00:24 Variance creates arbitrage: Pinker and common knowledge 1:01:25 Closing thoughts

Lukas Leuzinger and Alex Buxeda interview Cass Sunstein for Schweizer Monat. They dissect the mechanics of liberalism. Sunstein defines a tradition that encompasses Hayek and Burke. He counters the claims of Patrick Deneen. He argues that choice does not destroy faith or family. The dialogue shifts to nudges. Sunstein explains how choice architecture assists humans without it being manipulation. They analyze speech standards. They contrast the First Amendment with the laws of Switzerland and Germany. Sunstein outlines the divisions of power. He warns against the expansion of the executive. Buy Sunstein's latest book: On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom Check Sunstein's books here

Barbara Kolm, President of the Austrian School of Economics, joins Alex Buxeda to dismantle the myths of monetary nationalism, expose the political incentives behind inflation, and explain why trust collapses when money becomes a political tool. They explore Carl Menger’s legacy, why money is a discovery not an invention, how time and information shape economic order, and why Europe is quietly drifting toward central planning through the “law of rules”. From Bitcoin’s “don’t trust, verify,” to demographic decline, taxation traps, bureaucratic overreach, CBDCs, nudging theory, and the collapse of competitiveness in Europe, this episode is a deep dive into the institutions that shape freedom, responsibility, and prosperity. 0:00 Monetary nationalism and why debasing your currency backfires 1:54 What sound money is, and why states debase it 4:01 Menger vs. Knapp: money as discovery, not law 7:52 Time, value, and why information spreads slowly 10:01 Stability, the rule of law, and the "law of rules" 11:59 Brussels, central planning, and the lost subsidiarity principle 15:17 Europe's demographic collapse and falling productivity 17:46 Taxes on labor and why no one works more 20:03 The hidden costs in tax and social security 22:04 Capital flees to where it's best treated: Venezuela 23:31 Price tags on government: making the cost visible 27:08 Social justice, responsibility, and providing opportunity vs. redistribution 32:04 Fractional reserve, cash limits, and destroying property rights 34:35 CBDCs, self-sovereignty, and why cash is the ultimate settlement 38:11 Nudging as central planning: Spain's blackout and Germany's solar 41:52 Closing thoughts