In the latest New Money Review podcast, I interview Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University.

Kurz, the author of "Private Power and Democracy's Decline", to be published in May 2026, says that it's time to suppress technology firms' market power---or we will lose democracy.

In the podcast, we cover:

• why free market capitalism and democracy are no longer compatible
• the similarities and differences between the first and second US "gilded ages"
• why tech firms' market power cannot be addressed by 20th century anti-trust laws
• the need to tax monopoly profits
• how social media threatens democracy
• the need to repeal Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act
• why AI will be the great battle of the 21st century
• why individuals have to step forward to support democracy
• the forthcoming implosion of the MAGA movement
• why we're heading for a financial and economic crisis
• why economists need to study power relations

In the latest episode of Unseen Money, Timur Yunusov helps Paul Amery unravel a strange real-life story involving a spoofed eBay delivery, Paul’s phone number and a photo of an Indian lady in a pink dressing gown.

The story is part of a rapidly growing form of crime involving so-called “synthetic” identities. In a synthetic identity fraud, criminals create fake online identities by blending real, stolen data with fabricated information. They then use those identities to conduct money laundering and fraud.

In the podcast, we cover:

(00’ 25”) How Paul got a DPD delivery notification for an eBay parcel he hadn't ordered

(1’ 20”) How DPD provided “proof of delivery” to a woman in a pink dressing gown

(2’ 45”) How eBay showed no interest in investigating the transaction

(3’ 15”) Why a synthetic identity combines real and fictitious information

(4’ 40”) How criminals use synthetic identities to decrease online friction

(6’ 40”) Possible use of synthetic IDs in buy now pay later (BNPL) fraud

(7’ 10”) Why synthetic identity frauds don’t fit the standard stolen identity playbook

(7’ 40”) Why synthetic ID cases deserve much greater scrutiny from anti-fraud teams

(11’ 30”) Identity theft (account takeover) and synthetic identities

(13’ 00”) Why synthetic identity fraud has boomed post-COVID

(21’ 40”) AI and machine learning have turbocharged synthetic identity fraud

(23’ 40”) Who’s buying the sets of synthetic IDs?

(24’ 30”) How criminals use synthetic identities in frauds

(29’ 30”) Dead souls, the Russia-Ukraine war and the exploitation of fake identity sets

Tech firms and governments are pushing passkeys as a replacement for online passwords.

They argue that using passkeys will help cut down on fraud, prevent account takeovers and protect against password theft.

But Paul Amery and Timur Yunusov are sceptical that passkeys will take off. Listen to the latest episode of Unseen Money from New Money Review to find out why.

Here’s what we discuss in the podcast:

• (0’ 45”) why we need to get rid of passwords
• (2’ 35”) safer and less safe ways of using passwords
• (3’ 05”) password management practices
• (4’ 10”) what is a passkey?
• (6’ 10”) how passkeys replace reliance on a password with reliance on a trusted device
• (7’ 10”) what if we are trying to use our phones less?
• (8’ 00”) using your laptop as an alternative
• (8’ 20”) hardware devices to store your passkey
• (10’ 00”) passkeys won’t protect you against state surveillance or a kidnapper
• (12’ 20”) passkeys are only as secure as the surrounding infrastructure
• (13’ 00”) what happens if you lose the trusted device?
• (14’ 20”) unresolved questions regarding lost passkeys
• (14’ 50”) Paul’s unhappy experience setting up passkeys
• (15’ 50”) why financial institutions lag in introducing passkeys
• (16’ 50”) Timur’s survey of security research on passkeys
• (18’ 10”) where is the weakest link in the passkey enrolment chain?
• (19’ 30”) why Timur is sceptical of tech firms’ invitations to enrol passkeys
• (21’ 00”) who’s pushing passkeys and why?
• (22’ 30”) why some friction in online transactions is a good thing
• (23’ 30”) why Timur would not use a web browser passkey to access a bank account
• (27’ 30”) why large-scale passkey adoption is still far away
• (28’ 30”) passkey technology could be imposed

Last week, Google’s threat intelligence group warned that artificial intelligence (AI) is making malware attacks more dangerous.

[Malware is malicious software—programmes designed to disrupt, damage or gain unauthorised access to computer systems—usually delivered via phishing emails, compromised websites or infected downloads]

“Adversaries are no longer leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) just for productivity gains, they are deploying novel AI-enabled malware in active operations,” Google said in a 5000-word blog.

Are malware programmes using Large Language Models (LLMs) to dynamically generate malicious scripts, obfuscate their own code to evade detection, and leverage AI models to create malicious functions on demand, as Google warns?

Or it this yet another case of tech firms selling solutions to a problem they have created themselves?

Listen to the latest episode of Unseen Money from New Money Review, featuring co-hosts Timur Yunusov and Paul Amery, to hear more about the effect of AI malware.

In the podcast, we cover:

• Google’s warning about the rise of AI malware – reality or hype? (2’ 35”)
• Why LLMs were originally protected from harmful behaviour (4’ 10”)
• How criminals learned to develop LLMs without guardrails (4’ 55”)
• Model context protocols (MCPs) and AI agents as offensive tools (5’ 30”)
• Malicious payloads and web application firewalls (7’ 35”)
• Tricking LLMs by exploiting the wide range of input variables (8’ 30”)
• The state of the art for fraudsters when using LLMs (10’ 10”)
• Timur used AI to learn how to drain funds from a stolen phone (11’ 05”)
• How worried is Timur about the rise of AI malware? (14’ 20”)
• AI has dramatically reduced the cost and increased the speed of producing malware (15’)
• AI, teenage suicides and protecting users (16’ 50”)
• AI for good: using AI to combat AI malware (19’)
• How a Russian bank used AI chatbots to divert fraudsters (19’ 40”)
• Data poisoning—manipulating the training data for AI models (22’ 10”)
• Techniques for tricking LLMs (23’)
• Only state actors can manipulate AI models at scale (25’ 40”)
• The use of SMS blasters by fraudsters is exploding! (27’)

Some people have labelled the recent alliance between Silicon Valley and right-wing populist leaders “techno-fascism”. Is that too strong a term?

No, says Jacob Silverman in the latest New Money Review podcast.

“What do you call it when the highest levels of the corporate world merge with the executive of the government?” Silverman asks in the podcast. “I think that’s corporatism or fascism.”

Silverman is the author of a new book, “Gilded Rage”, in which he chronicles the radicalisation of Silicon Valley.

Focusing on a few central characters—Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks and Donald Trump—he poses a question that should concern us all. What happens if the world's richest and most powerful men decide to dismantle democracy?

“I think it’s very worrisome,” says Silverman. “We keep on breaching markers—things that haven’t happened before.”

Listen to the podcast to hear a discussion of:

• The post-9/11 convergence of technology and the security state
• How tech firms colluded with Trump to merge corporate and political power
• Why the technology of freedom may be incompatible with democracy
• Tech titans’ desire for social and physical escape
• JD Vance, the tech industry’s man in the White House
• The religiosity of Peter Thiel and JD Vance
• Rising nationalism and the booming defence tech industry
• How cryptocurrency catalysed the Republicans’ resurgence in the US
• Cryptocurrency as an accessory to political corruption
• How the AI boom was fed by the crypto bubble
• Why Jacob sued Twitter—and what happened next
• Donald Trump, Jeffrey Yass and the US government’s about-face on TikTok
• Social media as the informational battleground of global geopolitics

Long gone are the days when the Escobar family had to spend $2,500 a month on rubber bands to hold the cash they earned trading cocaine.

Now, the invention of cryptocurrency has made money launderers’ life a whole lot easier—or has it?

Investigative journalist Geoff White joins Paul Amery and Timur Yunusov in the latest episode of Unseen Money to discuss:

• Why a New York crypto money laundering case is attracting such close attention
• How technology has changed the business of crime
• Cryptocurrency mixers and decentralised finance
• North Korea and the Axie Infinity hack
• The ugly mix of organised crime, state sponsorship and espionage
• Sanctions regimes, cryptocurrency stablecoins and dollar hegemony
• Hackers, social media and money laundering
• Who will run the world’s digital money?

The decentralised finance (DeFi) market is booming—but the world’s best hackers are on a constant look-out for ways to steal your crypto tokens.

North Korea, which recently committed the largest theft in cryptocurrency history, is probably top of the hackers’ game.

What do crypto users need to know about the risks in this unregulated but fast-growing market?

In the latest episode of Unseen Money from New Money Review, Timur Yunusov and Paul Amery are joined by Arseny Reutov, chief technology officer at Decurity, a security audit and ethical hacking firm specialising in DeFi.

During the podcast, we discuss:

• Malware, ethereum and the recent $1.5bn Bybit hack
• State-of-the-art techniques in DeFi hacks
• Mixers, cross-chain bridges and the laundering of stolen funds
• How North Korea became the world leader in crypto hacks
• Ways of detecting flaws in DeFi smart contracts
• Who audits DeFi?
• Incentives to report, rather than exploit smart contract flaws
• Is DeFi security improving?

Most scams where the victim is tricked into paying money to fraudsters originate on social media—often on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

But in the UK around one scam in five—and nearly half by the total value stolen—exploits weaknesses in our telecommunications infrastructure.

That could be someone spoofing the number of a legitimate entity, such as the tax office or your bank, when calling you. It could be a scammer exploiting security vulnerabilities in the mobile network to compromise and intercept voice and SMS messages.

In a rapidly rising form of fraud, criminals impersonate the nearest cell phone tower and send messages that look like they’re from your bank or mobile service provider. One click on a link and you’re soon handing over valuable personal information or downloading malware that gives the scammers access to your payment app or crypto wallet.

In the latest episode of Unseen Money from New Money Review, my co-host Timur Yunusov and I are joined by telecom cybersecurity expert Dmitry Kurbatov, chief executive of UK-based company SecurityGen.

In the podcast, Dmitry explains how criminals can spoof a trusted entity’s phone number when calling you. We look at SIM swap frauds and discuss who bears responsibility for the continuing security flaws in mobile networks.

We highlight in which countries users are currently most exposed to mobile phone-based frauds. We look at the recent SK Telecoms breach in South Korea, which exposed the personal and financial data of up to 23 million users. And we describe the ever more ingenious methods being used by scammers to subvert telecoms networks.

Some technical terms used during the podcast:

“SIP trunking” is the digital method of making and receiving phone calls and other digital communication over an internet connection.

“SIP protocol” is a signalling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating multimedia sessions, including voice, video, and messaging.

“SIM farms” or “SIM boxes” bridge the internet and cellular networks, enabling the routing and redirection of calls or messages through multiple SIM cards.

“Rich Communication Services (RCS)” are a messaging protocol that enhances traditional SMS by offering richer features like multimedia sharing, group chats, read receipts and typing indicators.

“Drive-by smishing” is where fraudsters use fake base stations to force victims’ phones to connect to a fake mobile network and then use SMS messages to distribute malicious links or initiate scams.

In “software-defined radio”, components that are conventionally implemented in analogue hardware (e.g., mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators, detectors) are instead implemented by means of software on a computer.

A “global title” is an address used in SCCP (Signalling Connection Control Part, a network-layer protocol in telecommunications) for routing signalling messages on telecommunications networks.

“SS7” is a set of telecommunications protocols that are used to exchange information between different telephone networks.

“IPX” is a telecommunications interconnection model for the exchange of internet protocol-based traffic between customers of separate mobile and fixed operators.