Phoenix Cast

In this episode of Phoenix Cast, hosts John, Rich, and Kyle sit down with General Tim Haugh, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), the 19th Director of NSA and 4th Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of American cyber power. The general makes his case for keeping the dual hat, takes on the CSIS and FDD reports calling for an independent cyber service, and explains why Cyber Command 2.0, built on lessons from SOCOM’s post-9/11 maturation, gets the nation to better outcomes faster. The conversation moves from his proposal for a specialized court to accelerate industry takedowns of adversary infrastructure, to why agentic AI is about to create identity problems at a scale we’ve never seen, to whether a service with no enlisted personnel could ever actually work. Along the way, Haugh reflects on leading the two very different cultures of NSA and CYBERCOM, life after 34 years in uniform, and the advice he’d give his second lieutenant self. If you want to hear how one of the most consequential leaders in the cyber community thinks about the decisions shaping the force right now, this is the one.
We'd love to hear your thoughts! Tweet us @ThePhoenixCast, and don't forget to join our LinkedIn Group to connect with fellow Phoenix Casters. If you enjoyed the episode, help us out by leaving one of those coveted 5-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Links:
60 Minutes (Haugh on China / critical infrastructure, 12 Oct 2025):
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-hacking-us-critical-infrastructure-retired-general-tim-haugh-warns-60-minutes-transcript/
USCYBERCOM 2024 Posture Statement:
https://www.cybercom.mil/Media/News/Article/3739700/posture-statement-of-general-timothy-d-haugh-2024/
DefenseScoop - "We want to be at mastery" (Feb 2025):
https://defensescoop.com/2025/02/20/cybercom-wants-more-consistent-readiness-approach-across-services/
DefenseScoop - CYBERCOM 2.0 House briefing (Feb 2025):
https://defensescoop.com/2025/02/12/cybercom-2-0-model-house-lawmakers-receive-first-briefing/
FDD - Implementing CYBERCOM 2.0 Should Not Postpone Establishing a Cyber Force (Apr 2026):
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/04/23/implementing-cybercom-2-0-should-not-postpone-establishing-a-cyber-force/
Air & Space Forces - Former CYBERCOM commanders urge caution on a separate service (Dec 2025):
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/former-cybercom-commanders-new-military-cyber-service/
Yale Jackson School Blue Center Senior Fellow announcement:
https://jackson.yale.edu/news/general-timothy-haugh-named-blue-center-senior-fellow/
Ballistic Ventures Strategic Advisor announcement (Jul 2025):
https://ballisticventures.com/former-nsa-director-and-commander-of-u-s-cyber-command-gen-timothy-d-haugh-joins-ballistic-ventures-as-strategic-advisor/
CISA Joint Advisory AA24-038A - Volt Typhoon:
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa24-038a
Air Force Biography:
https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/1286007/timothy-d-haugh/

In this episode of Phoenix Cast, host John mentally travels back to the Marine Corps Communication Electronics School in 29 Palms, the place where the cast was basically born, to talk with Col Arun Shankar, MCCES’s commanding officer, and LtCol Steve Morello, who leads Communication Training Battalion. The conversation digs into how the comm community is shifting from being “just plumbers” to owning information management, why how you employ a C2 system now matters as much as the system itself, and the cybersecurity training gaps the schoolhouse is racing to close. John presses them on managing risk, virtualizing hands-on training, and how they’re using AI to compress a three-year curriculum cycle down to days. If you claim comm or cyber, lead Marines, or just want to hear how the schoolhouse is modernizing to keep pace with Ukraine-era threats, this homecoming episode is worth the listen.
We'd love to hear your thoughts! Tweet us @ThePhoenixCast, and don't forget to join our LinkedIn Group to connect with fellow Phoenix Casters. If you enjoyed the episode, help us out by leaving one of those coveted 5-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Links:
- Murello bio (MCCES): https://www.mcces.marines.mil/Leaders/Biography/Article/3929785/lieutenant-colonel-steven-murello/
- Shankar bio (MCCES): https://www.mcces.marines.mil/Leaders/Biography/Article/3929593/colonel-arun-shankar/
- Shankar Hoover Q&A (Nov 2022): https://www.hoover.org/news/qa-lieutenant-colonel-arun-shankar-us-marine-corps-national-security-affairs-fellow
- "Assured C2: Pivoting the 06xx Community," MCG Nov 2022: https://mca-marines.org/blog/gazette/assured-c2/
- "Offensive Cyberspace Operations," MCG Feb 2023: https://www.mca-marines.org/wp-content/uploads/Offensive-Cyberspace-Operations-Shankar.pdf
- USNI News, "Virtual Tech in Marine Comms School Saves Time, Money" (Feb 2026): https://news.usni.org/2026/02/23/virtual-tech-in-marine-comms-school-saves-time-money
Book Recommendations

Col Shankar: Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman; Range by David Epstein.

LtCol Murello: Mindset by Carol Dweck; White Sun War by Mick Ryan; 10 to 25 by David Yeager.

In this episode of Phoenix Cast, John and Rich sit down with Keith Mularski and Damon Mathews from Qintel. Keith is the former FBI agent who went undercover in DarkMarket as "Master Splyntr," eventually becoming a top-five spammer in the world and a "made man" in the cybercriminal underground before the operation culminated in 80+ arrests. Damon is a retired Marine CI/HUMINT officer now running national security operations at Qintel, and he walks through the years of policy fights and lawyer wrangling that came with pulling human collection into cyberspace. The conversation gets into attribution, what counts as intelligence versus evidence, and when "name and shame" is the right move. Worth a listen if you've ever wondered how 20 years of global collection becomes an 80% solution at the operational level, or why your Uber Eats password might be the thing that outs your tradecraft.
We'd love to hear your thoughts! Tweet us @ThePhoenixCast, and don't forget to join our LinkedIn Group to connect with fellow Phoenix Casters. If you enjoyed the episode, help us out by leaving one of those coveted 5-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Links:
Qintel - Platform Blue: https://www.qintel.com/platformblue
https://www.pghtech.org/news-and-publications/Qintel
Mathews - https://cipress.podbean.com/e/marine-ci-secrets-damon-matthews-on-multi-use-human-networks-high-stakes-ops/
Mularski - Pitt Cyber bio: https://www.cyber.pitt.edu/people/keith-mularski
Police1 - Witness to History (DarkMarket / Master Splyntr): https://www.police1.com/fbi/articles/witness-to-history-darkmarket-the-fbi-agent-who-became-master-splyntr-UuhOCI9r3Qfyo1du/

In this episode of Phoenix Cast, hosts John and Kyle break down a packed week in cyber: the Canvas ed-tech breach by Shiny Hunters that hit 9,000 schools and 275 million records right at testing season (both of their kids' schools are scrambling to go non-digital), Firefox's eye-opening collaboration with Anthropic's Mythos model that surfaced 271 vulnerabilities in a single release for a fraction of the cost of a traditional bug bounty, and the Dirty Frag Linux kernel zero-day that escalates to root in seconds — but whose fix breaks IPsec VPNs and file sharing. They also dig into the new MAR ADMIN making AI training mandatory for every Marine, and John collects on Kyle's gaslighting from two episodes ago about model quality degradation (Anthropic basically said "whoops"). Stick around for John's hot take that ASIs — Authorized Service Interruptions — are officially dead in a world where chained vulnerabilities and 271 patches can drop in a single release.
We’d love to hear your thoughts! Tweet us @ThePhoenixCast, and don't forget to join our LinkedIn Group to connect with fellow Phoenix Casters. If you enjoyed the episode, help us out by leaving one of those coveted 5-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Links - Canvas Hack:
Canvas Login Portals Hacked - ShinyHunters Extortion Campaign (BleepingComputer)
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/canvas-login-portals-hacked-in-mass-shinyhunters-extortion-campaign/
Hackers Deface School Login Pages After Claiming Another Instructure Hack (TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/07/hackers-deface-school-login-pages-after-claiming-another-instructure-hack/
2026 Canvas Security Incident (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Canvas_security_incident
Links - Firefox Using Mythos:
Claude Mythos Has Found 271 Zero-Days in Firefox (Schneier on Security)
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/04/claude-mythos-has-found-271-zero-days-in-firefox.html
The Zero-Days Are Numbered (Mozilla Blog)
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/privacy-security/ai-security-zero-day-vulnerabilities/
Behind the Scenes Hardening Firefox with Claude Mythos Preview (Mozilla Hacks)
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/05/behind-the-scenes-hardening-firefox/
Claude Mythos Finds 271 Firefox Flaws, Mozilla Believes It Shifts Security Toward Defenders (Help Net Security)
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2026/04/22/claude-mythos-mozilla-vulnerabilities-scanning/
Claude Mythos Finds 271 Firefox Vulnerabilities (SecurityWeek)
https://www.securityweek.com/claude-mythos-finds-271-firefox-vulnerabilities/
Mythos and Cybersecurity (Schneier on Security)
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/04/mythos-and-cybersecurity.html
Links - Dirty Frag:
New Linux ‘Dirty Frag’ Zero-Day With PoC Exploit Gives Root Privileges (BleepingComputer)
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-linux-dirty-frag-zero-day-with-poc-exploit-gives-root-privileges/
Linux Kernel Dirty Frag LPE Exploit Enables Root Access Across Major Distributions (The Hacker News)
https://thehackernews.com/2026/05/linux-kernel-dirty-frag-lpe-exploit.html
Active Attack: Dirty Frag Linux Vulnerability Expands Post-Compromise Risk (Microsoft Security Blog)
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2026/05/08/active-attack-dirty-frag-linux-vulnerability-expands-post-compromise-risk/
RHSB-2026-003 Networking Subsystem Privilege Escalation - Linux Kernel (Red Hat)
https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/RHSB-2026-003
Dirty Frag PoC Exploit (V4bel/dirtyfrag GitHub)
https://github.com/V4bel/dirtyfrag

In this episode of Phoenix Cast, hosts John and Rich — with Kyle sidelined by what Rich suspects was an AI-orchestrated exploit — welcome CW4 Justin Helphenstine, a U.S. Army cyber warrant officer with 22+ years of service and deep offensive cyber operations experience. The conversation digs into what Army cyber warrant officers actually do versus their Marine Corps counterparts, how the talent pipeline has matured from the early days when there wasn’t even a cyber MOS, and the real tension between retaining senior technical talent and losing them to the private sector. Justin makes the case that as cyber tools become commodified on both offense and defense, the warrant officer’s true value proposition shifts from technical wizardry to creating shared understanding — and he surprises John by arguing that warrant officers should learn to speak the language of joint warfighting functions and doctrine, not just binary. The episode builds to a spirited exchange on the cyber force debate, force generation versus force employment, and whether agentic AI will fundamentally change what it means to be a cyber professional — with Justin warning that outsourcing communication skills to AI is “skipping leg day” for military professionals.
We’d love to hear your thoughts! Tweet us @ThePhoenixCast, and don’t forget to join our LinkedIn Group to connect with fellow Phoenix Casters. If you enjoyed the episode, help us out by leaving one of those coveted 5-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. 
Thanks for listening!
Links:
The death of expertise: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Expertise-Campaign-Established-Knowledge/dp/0190469412