In the latest episode of the Dinis Guarda Podcast, Emily Crose, Cybersecurity Expert, Author of ‘Hack to the Future’ and Former US Intelligence Officer discusses Cybersecurity and AI, data privacy, IP Creation, digital security and the Need for digital awareness. The podcast is powered by Businessabc.net, Citiesabc.com, Wisdomia.ai, and Sportsabc.org.
Emily Crose is an expert in technology, cybersecurity, and government transparency, with over ten years of experience. She spent seven years in the U.S. intelligence community, working with the CIA, NSA, and United States Army INSCOM. Emily co-founded Hacking History, a project studying the dynamic between hackers and the U.S. government.
Emily co-founded Hacking History, a project studying the dynamic between hackers and the U.S. government. In 2024, she authored ‘Hack to the Future’, a book exploring hacker culture’s impact on government policy. As a transgender woman, Emily actively advocates for LGBT+ inclusion and diversity in tech. She also speaks at renowned events, including the International Spy Museum and the Dragos Industrial Security Conference, sharing her insights on cybersecurity and data privacy.
During the interview with Dinis Guarda, Emily Crose discusses the increasing challenges of data privacy and the weaponisation of personal information:
“Data privacy has always been a big issue, or at least it has since the turn of the millennium… It’s become very prevalent in the last 15–20 years when we start to see these major breaches of credit agencies.
There’s definitely a higher level of security awareness among people today than there was even 15 years ago… But the flip side is that people have also become very used to having their personal information leaked.
Often, the people who we entrust with that information mishandle it or don’t provide the same level of protective safeguards… It’s not really a major issue for them if they lose their entire customer database, but it certainly is a problem for all of us.”
Cybersecurity and AI: Shaping the future of digital defence
Emily explains how AI can help solve difficult security problems but says that people must stay aware and think critically to reduce risks:
“There is always going to be the compartment of technology and business that we can’t control, like who provides our power, who generates our electricity, and distributes it to us.
AI may play a bigger role in organisations as we spend money to up our security game in those areas. Things are really only going to get more complex in terms of terminology and technology integration.
I co-founded a small company called Neuralized AI, and what we are trying to do is parse tons and tons of logs generated by businesses—hundreds of gigabytes, terabytes of logs—to understand and manage them at scale.
What I see AI as being able to do is to sort of fill some of those gaps as an assistive technology, rather than something that can completely replace people.
Especially if we have a potential industrial accident or the conditions for that forming, I can see Artificial Intelligence being an assistive technology to avoid those types of outcomes or to even investigate problems.”
Talking about the importance of digital literacy, Emily said:
“Folks have to have some level of awareness of what is developing—at least have a vague idea of what the cutting edge is, or at least know somebody who knows that, so that we can all better understand what our security exposures are.”
AI and IP: Redefining ownership in the digital era
Emily discusses the complicated issues of creating and owning intellectual property (IP) in the age of AI. She highlights the ethical and legal problems caused by AI models using large datasets, often without clear consent, to produce new content
Talking about the context of IP and AI parallels, she said:
“We can also look to previous cases that are formative in pinpointing where we are on this technological journey. Of course, there was a famous one from decades past involving Andy Warhol and his copying of art and reproduction, and what that means for fair use.
There certainly is a feeling among creators of new IP that, ‘If I create IP and a bigger company comes along and takes it for its own purpose, why can’t I sue them? They would sue me if the roles were reversed.
AI companies have a big job ahead of them to explain why it’s morally and ethically acceptable to use content in the ways that they currently are.
IP in terms of what’s fair and what’s not fair is definitely a thing that has been criticized—a criticism that’s been leveled at AI companies and how they deal with this stuff.
I’m sure we’re going to have landmark cases on this in the very near future… but it may not be for another couple of years before we see clear resolutions.”
Emily also explains the need for resolution in IP disputes:
“It’s definitely a problem that needs to be solved before we can see the sort of wide adoption and creation involving AI—or reproduction in some cases—that I think the original creators of the technology intended.”
Linux threat detection and hacker evolution
Emily provides insight into her work as a technical manager at a Linux-focused cybersecurity division, where she leads efforts to identify threats in Linux environments:
“I’m working on finding threats to Linux environments. We’re trying to identify those markers of breaches that are more behaviour-based rather than traditional antivirus signatures.
My team is focused on developing kernel-level detection. If you were to use a specific tool on a victim’s machine, regardless of what that tool is, some of those behaviours will be the same.
We’re able to identify some of those markers at the kernel level that helps us determine whether that behaviour may be unwanted.”
She later explains about the global evolution of the hacking community and said:
“Every history that I’ve seen on the hacking community has been very US-centric—so what are American hackers doing and how has that impacted the world—and I think that’s, you know, it’s fine. But I knew before writing the book that there was more to the story.”
“Trying to figure out how we built a global infrastructure for hackers to exist within, a global context for this sort of niche interest to grow within, and then ultimately become a party to geopolitics on a wide scale is something that I really wanted to learn more about.
It takes about 50 years for this sort of weird, misfit group of hackers to go from freelancing to becoming resources that the government actively seeks to recruit.
In the early 90s, hackers were seen as this sort of outlaw group that the law needed to do something about. By the mid-to-late 90s, governments started bringing hackers in to answer questions to Congress in the United States.”
Understanding intelligence agencies: Roles and methods
As the interview continues, Emily explains how intelligence requirements originate from military, legislative, or executive directives and the processes involved in gathering, analysing, and synthesising information to inform decision-making:
“In the United States, we have three three-letter agencies: FBI, NSA, CIA, and they all have requirements for intelligence collection.
Most of those requirements come from either military sources or other US legislative sources. For example, even the president can have requirements for military or intelligence collection.
It’s up to the three-letter agencies, the intelligence community, to gather as much intelligence about those areas of interest as they can use the techniques that they have available to them.
Whether that means talking to an individual—getting it through what we call human intelligence or HUMINT—or we think that they may be transferring information over a signal-based device or a computer… if that information lives on a computer system, send it to a different three-letter agency and then they go and get it.
It’s a sort of complex web of needs and providers of information, but it’s very simple when you break it all down into those sorts of containers.
Once you get the raw information, you have to send it to people who can piece the entire picture together. Analysts who work within the intelligence community are empowered to piece those puzzle pieces together based on several different sources.
They produce an intelligence report that is synthesised from all of the reporting on signals collection, human collection, satellite imagery, and all of that… to make it very simple for decision-makers to consume that information and then make a choice that really impacts everybody.”
Emily also discusses the difference between white hat, black hat, and grey hat hackers.
“The most basic difference between white hat and black hat hackers is that one group—the white hat hackers—typically have a formal permission-based system that they use. They have a scope, sign contracts, and have goals in mind that benefit the folks that they sign the contract with.
Black hats, on the other hand, sort of make their own rules and they don’t ask for permission when they do their work.
Gray hats kind of live in the spaces in between… Maybe they do have permission, but the permission only goes so far, or maybe they didn’t get permission, but they have a very specific goal in mind.”
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