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Kevin Fu

1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

12statements → 9claims → 8claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 4.42/5average certainty → 2.17/5average debate potential → 2said about them ↓

6 supported 2 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

9 assertions · 1 opinion · 2 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 8 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Kevin argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Fu: Wireless signals could trigger fatal heart rhythms in cardiac defibrillators
“We discovered we could actually generate our own wireless signals that would trigger this, what is effectively a debugging command to wirelessly induce fatal heart rhythms.”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 5:17 Kevin Fu

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
50% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

255 words/min while actually speaking · 75.6 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Kevin Fu: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,534 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Kevin Fu said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Supported
Fu: Wireless signals could trigger fatal heart rhythms in cardiac defibrillators
“We discovered we could actually generate our own wireless signals that would trigger this, what is effectively a debugging command to wirelessly induce fatal heart rhythms.”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 5:17 Kevin Fu
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fu: Hospital medical device malware is mostly decade-old, automated malware
“There's, it's nothing too sophisticated. We're not talking about nation state adversaries or even the kid in the basement trying to hack into things. This is garden variety malware automated, sometimes 10 or 15 years old getting in.”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 9:09 Kevin Fu
Assertion Supported
Fu: Pacemakers can be tricked into shutting down via RF interference
“A fun little trick you can do is if you send a particular pulse at a rate that looks like a normal cardiac rhythm in this case one hertz, so 60 beats per minute we've been able to trick pacemakers into effectively turning off because they say, oh, the heart is…”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 13:28 Kevin Fu
Opinion
Fu: Wireless connectivity is added to devices for marketing, not safety
“But the interesting thing about wireless is that, you know, it was used for a specific reason, to address the clinical risk, but now I often see it used sort of willy-nilly on devices, more for the marketing side, less for actually addressing a safety risk, bu…”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 6:09 Kevin Fu
Assertion Supported
Fu: Medical manufacturer bundled malware into a ventilator software update
“This medical device manufacturer was attaching this bonus piece of malware to the software update for ventilators.”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 8:47 Kevin Fu
Assertion Supported
Fu: An infusion pump provided unauthenticated root access via telnet
“He discovered that there was actually if you tell net to port 23, you get a root shell.”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 9:48 Kevin Fu
Assertion Supported
Fu: Acoustic tones at 8 kHz can disable drones mid-flight
“He discovered if you send acoustic tones to a particular drone, you can cause the drone to fall out of the sky, because the MEMS accelerometer on the inside of the chip has a resonant frequency, and if you hit it at eight kilohertz, It just tricks that little …”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 14:36 Kevin Fu
Assertion Supported
Fu: Computer power draw from wall sockets leaks web browsing activity
“One of my students discovered that ah, he could actually tell what website I'm browsing by looking at my power consumption from the power outlet.”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 15:47 Kevin Fu
Insight
Fu: IoT security fails because devices blindly trust raw sensor data
“So the lesson on sensors is basically trust but verify. A lot of IoT devices are taking in sensor data, and they're just acting on it blindly, but you need a way to verify that what you're sensing is actually a real physical phenomena.”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 15:34 Kevin Fu
Insight
Kevin Fu: The Best Startup Teams Form During Real-World Crises
“What I discovered was the best way to find a team for a startup is you get a bunch of people to help you out in crisis, and the people who work well together, they're gonna stick around.”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 16:41 Kevin Fu
Assertion Partly supported
Fu: Wireless medical devices significantly improved patient safety by preventing infection
“Wireless addressed a specific risk, that is infection. So it was a tremendous leap, ah, in, in safety by introducing wireless”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 3:15 Kevin Fu
Assertion Partly supported
Fu: Few defibrillators last over 10 years unless nuclear-powered
“There are only a few people who have defibrillators more than 10 years old. That's because there used to be some polonium-based batteries, nuclear-powered batteries, and those typically outlast the patient.”
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 ▶ 5:57 Kevin Fu

The other half of the tape: Kevin Fu's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode on the a16z Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Dan Boneh 2

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011212017episodesmentions
0112017episodes it came up in
0010.5212017episodesmentions per episode
2017 2 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Kevin Fu Jul 28, 2017 16m
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