JSOC Data Hacker Exposes Delta Covert Op & Investigates 2017 Vegas Shooting | Mike Yeagley • 343
Julian Dorey · 7 Oct 2025 · 3h 18m
Guest: Mike Yeagley · Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
A former software and data-marketing executive describes how he stumbled into national security work by discovering that commercially available location data—originally built for advertising and audience targeting—could be used to track military movements, foreign officials, and intelligence operations. He recounts geofencing Fort Bragg out of curiosity and finding device patterns leading to an abandoned Syrian cement factory and residential neighborhoods tied to special operations units, a discovery that eventually got him pulled into work with JSOC, the FBI, and other agencies. He explains how the same commercial data pipelines—ad IDs, location pings, telemetry—can reveal patterns of life precise enough to identify protective details, predict presidential travel, or infer combatant status inside a building during a raid. He also describes being called in the night of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting to search for transnational terrorism links to Stephen Paddock, and how a data artifact nearly created a false lead involving an explosives training site. The conversation moves into surveillance tradecraft, the erosion of privacy as an operational shield for intelligence officers, and broader geopolitical tangents covering China's United Front influence networks, fentanyl trafficking, the Tik Tok ownership fight, Jamal Khashoggi's phone exploitation, and Cold War history. Throughout, the guest argues that ubiquitous technical surveillance cannot be defeated, only managed, and that intelligence tradecraft must adapt by blending into ordinary commercial life rather than trying to disappear from it.
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What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- Origins in mobile ad data and audiences
- How ad IDs and cookies track devices
- Apple, Tim Cook, and the privacy pivot
- Data brokers as a hidden industry
- Career background and DARPA-era data work
- Discovering Fort Bragg device patterns to Syria
- Ubiquitous technical surveillance and tradecraft countermeasures
- Tracking Putin's bodyguards and Khashoggi's exploited devices
- China's United Front Work Department and data control
- Tik Tok sale, Israel influence, and geopolitical tangents
- 2017 Las Vegas shooting investigation
- High-value target raid and non-combatant tracking
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“When I first started this, I was trying to establish transnational links and Steven Paddock goes and shoots up Jason Aldine concert in Vegas. You get that call at 10:00 at night.”
“If I can do it, we must assume that an adversary can do it, right?”
“I wasn't tracking Putin. I was tracking his bodyguards.”
“I have been in meetings with Arabs and Israelis... the Israelis are selling surveillance gear.”