“We will primarily use social engineering, and it will take us three weeks,” McAfee wrote in an op-ed published by Business Insider. “If you accept my offer, then you will not need to ask Apple to place a back door in its product, which will be the beginning of the end of America.”
His offer was accompanied by a manifesto ridiculing the federal government for insisting that technology companies include backdoors in their encryption algorithms.
“This is a black day and the beginning of the end of the U.S. as a world power,” McAfee wrote. “The government has ordered a disarmament of our already ancient cybersecurity and cyberdefense systems, and it is asking us to take a walk into that near horizon where cyberwar is unquestionably waiting, with nothing more than harsh words as a weapon and the hope that our enemies will take pity at our unarmed condition and treat us fairly.”
The central theme in McAfee’s criticism was that the FBI was unable to crack the encryption due to its shortsighted management and hiring policies.
“Why do the best hackers on the planet not work for the FBI? Because the FBI will not hire anyone with a 24-inch purple mohawk, 10-gauge ear piercings, and a tattooed face who demands to smoke weed while working and won't work for less than a half-million dollars a year,” McAfee wrote. “But you bet your ass that the Chinese and Russians are hiring similar people with similar demands and have been for many years. It's why we are decades behind in the cyber race.”
