On the Internet:
"You spend time in cyberspace, or you troll around, and the general feeling is that you and I can have different personas in this world. We can have our digital persona. That's an early warning about how flaky this world is going to be - a world full of total flakiness where we can't trust anything."
*
On experimental Internet payment systems:
"They want to dump money into this unreal world ... I work in this world, and I have digital personas like you do, and I say, 'Would I put real money into this flaky, unreal world, where a thing isn't what it looks? You must be crazy.'
"It's fairly easy to sell a bunch of software and consumer products and games. If somebody buys a game and they don't like it, it's not the end of the world. Once you start to fiddle with real money and little old ladies or old men, or just average people or small companies - now we're talking serious stuff."
*
On security:
"I think highly secure, tamper-proof electronics are going to become a very important issue. So that people can't mess around with it, unless you're a national agency or a government. Not some kid in a university breaking in and messing around.
"(One possibility) is to authenticate you biologically. That's going to be very delicate. (The problem is) how do I know it's really you and not some imposter?"
*
On Security First, the first true Internet bank:
"Would you put a million bucks in, if you had it? Would you go deposit a million bucks?"
* On information warfare: "The areas of risk (in an information war) are the telecommunications infrastructure of the United States, the air traffic control system, the power management system, all the electricity grids. And - guess what? - the financial system.
"When people begin to understand what's going on here, we're going to have to go to the kind of technology of the Electronic Monetary System to protect ourselves. We will not be able to protect ourselves until we get this sort of technology in place.
"The society most at risk is this one, and the area most at risk is the financial system. So we had better have the fear of God behind us, which we do. We know what can happen when people start to do naughty things to you. These are very smart people - very, very worrisome. I think in this (electronic money) system we have the seeds of our salvation. We will see."
