Tech Pioneer to Madman - The Bizarre Life of John McAfee

hi welcome to another episode of cold fusion where i cover anything in science technology business or history imagine the following movie plot points in your head a man who fathered 47 children had an excessive use of illicit substances murder and the holding of secrets involving the deep state sounds like the details of a hollywood script but you might not know that these details are attributed to john mcafee the founder of mcavee antivirus his death to this day is shrouded in mystery but before we get ahead of ourselves just who was john mcafee and why do social media audiences not accept what has been published about his death this is the story of the rise and demise of john mcafee let's take a look [Music] john mcafee was born on the 18th of september 1945 in england he pioneered the anti-virus software known as mcafee which guards your computer and data against major cyber threats including viruses ransomware malware unwanted programs spyware and more before this though mcafee's early life was riddled with complications his father was an alcoholic who committed suicide when jon was just 15 an event that haunted him till his final days jon seemingly following in his father's footsteps gained a bit of a habit for drinking while he attended college he was an ambitious entrepreneur early on in his life amassing a small fortune by selling magazines door to door his interest in computing was gained through the experience of working on coded punch card systems in the 1960s this experience aided mcafee in securing a job at the missouri pacific railroad in which he helped organize train schedules john's madness would show up early here while at his job he would start experimenting with harder drugs choosing lsd john would apparently go to work many days while high on the substance he would also buy a bag of the psychedelic drug known as dmt apparently he did a one-line sample of the drug and felt nothing and then proceeded to do the entire bag completely hallucinating he ran outside his workplace and hid behind a waste bin [Music] despite the chaos mcafee's career took him to lockheed martin in the 1980s a company that specialized in aerospace and defense at the time computers were still relatively new and it would take a further six years in 1986 for the first virus to hit computers john became curious and read up as much as he could on pc viruses he decided to create a company mcafee associates to fight back against a relatively unknown problem at the time i was living with my brother-in-law in santa clara california and he was reading the local newspaper about this thing called brand new thing computer virus what is this thing i mean a virus that could replicate itself live move from one machine to another well that's fascinating um so i sat and i thought about it how on earth could someone do this and then it occurred to me how they did it and at the same time it occurred to me how i could stop it so i wrote a little program and two weeks later five million people were using it interestingly it was one of the first pieces of computer software to be distributed across the internet by the end of the 1980s his organization was already making five million dollars per year and some of the biggest companies in the world were using his anti-virus platform it would not be until 1992 that the sheer functionality of the software would be tested against the michelangelo virus infecting 5 million computers prior to this antivirus for computers wasn't seen as a must-have product however michelangelo changed that enabling mcafee associates to grow as a company even further john would resign from mcafee associates in 1994 but he was just getting started two years after this he sold his shares in the company for about a hundred million dollars for now he would keep a low profile but later on in his life he would be no stranger to the limelight but more on this later after conquering the world of anti-virus jon decided to start a new venture a venture into social media before social media was even a thing it's a little known fact but mcafee would work on a social network project mcafee's social media site was to be called tribal voice and at one point it had over seven hundred thousand members it also featured an instant messenger function called powwow it allowed users to have a virtual whiteboard play sound files to each other share files instantaneously with other users with a simple drag and drop interface it even allowed users to share their web surfing experiences concurrently with others and all of this was in 1994 a full decade before myspace would rise to prominence unfortunately the project never caught on to go mainstream perhaps it was too early the global financial crisis of 2008 affected john's fortune considerably apparently his 100 million dollars had shrunk to as little as four million dollars however this would not be the final chapter in his life story and his dwindling funds did not deter him from getting the most out of a search for a wild life in the late 2000s mcafee began selling his land and moved to belize a caribbean country situated on the northeastern coast of central america his lifestyle in belize was certainly not for everyone it defied conventional living soon enough pictures of him started surfacing on the internet with a haram of women and he often had locals who he used as personal bodyguards armed with guns these shady dealings led to rumors about him making drugs there were many insane activities that john got up to in this time including excessive drug use and allegedly fathering 47 children it was through this bizarre lifestyle that he managed to retain cultural significance though at this stage john's mental health will start to decline rapidly and he became increasingly paranoid during this time in belize mcafee personally felt that he was losing any form of connection with society this hiatus away from american tech culture saw john get involved in the world of antibiotics the microbiologist alison adonizo gave him assistance towards creating a product using plans to combat illness though later on alison would accuse john mcafee of sexual assault [Music] as time progressed john's life would get even more insane while in belize john was having disagreements with his neighbor gregory fowle the disagreements were over his dogs according to the documentary gringo the dangerous life of john mcafee foul poisoned mcafee's dogs although mcafee refutes what was said in the documentary apparently he had given five thousand dollars to a local hitman to torture and kill gregory in 2012. i barely knew gregory fought i'd never had dinner with him i'd never spoken the entire five years i was there i said maybe 50 words to him he did not like my dogs and the the past two occasions i had seen him walking the beach he he complained but so did everybody how do you feel knowing that there's going to be people out there who are going to always suspect that you did it that's a public perception that that i have no control over right now i had no connection whatsoever with mr fall's death if someone wants to think otherwise that's okay at the time of his passing the family members of gregory passed mcafee's name to the authorities not long after this occurred john mcafee was mentioned as a person of interest to the belize government in 2012 the media outlet vice was interviewing mcafee in guatemala after he had snuck out from belize pictures of him were published usually not a big deal but these particular pictures included gps coordinates this was enough detail for the guatemalan police to use in order to hunt down mcafee he was arrested on charges of illegal entry into the country while under arrest some speculate that john faked a series of heart attacks real or not he was sent back to america in 2013 mcafee posted a youtube video called how to uninstall mcafee software the footage is comical in nature mcafee is acting absurd with a bunch of women surrounding him there's guns chain smoking and him snorting drugs all while talking directly to the viewer the video has 11 million hits on youtube in 2015 mcafee was arrested in tennessee for driving under the influence and being in possession of a firearm while intoxicated mcafee would continue being a public figure and would constantly talk about cyber security privacy and freedom all the while the us government was chasing to recover millions of dollars that they said that mcafee owed in taxes john refused to give the government tax returns between 2014 to 2018 it was his belief that taxation was theft interestingly john mcafee would run for u.s president both for the 2016 and 2020 elections why do you want to run for president because sir the greatest problem facing america today is cyber war it is on the horizon larry already two teenagers took out the entire country of ukraine's power for one day using a 25 year old piece of software with 17 lines of code can you imagine sir what the chinese can do to us and you tell me who is running today who can fix this problem by now mcafee had been avoiding u.s law enforcement for some years and some of that time aboard his mega yacht and then things began to get really strange as if they weren't already a tweet by him in 2019 made the claim that quote the us government would kill him and cover it up as a suicide and another tweet would read quote getting subtle messages from the u.s officials saying in effect we're coming for you mcafee we're going to kill yourself end quote john had even got a tattoo which read whacked which was a reference to his cryptocurrency and also his firm belief that jeffrey epstein didn't kill himself on october 3rd 2020 john was in a spanish airport he was about to board a flight to istanbul but he was detained by authority he was sent to prison and was due to be extradited back to the us he would be found dead on june 23 2021 in spanish prison he was 75 years old [Music] mcafee's death in a spanish prison cell was shrouded in mystery it proved to be a fertile ground for online conspiracy theories and that's not unexpected considering his social media posts janus john's widow reportedly told media outlets that his last words were i love you and i will call you in the evening i blame the u.s authorities for this tragedy because of these politically motivated charges against him my husband is now dead he did not deserve to die in a filthy prison like a caged animal the associated press though did report that he was found with a suicide note on him allegedly john had tried to kill himself before in february in a different part of the barcelona jail a psychiatrist made the assessment that john was just attention-seeking and it was a stunt but it resulted in him being moved to another part of the facility the main reason that people doubt that john mcafee killed himself was that he claimed to have a dead man switch and this would release a number of sensitive documents in 2019 mcafee was recorded stating quote i've collected files on corruption in governments for the first time i'm naming names and specifics i'll begin with a corrupt cia agent and two bahamian officials coming today if i'm arrested or disappear 31 plus terabytes of incriminating data will be released to the press even more controversy stands surrounding john's death when his instagram posted a mysterious q some say that q is a reference to q others speculate that it could be a key to the code of the dead man switch a day after his death a twitter user who had engaged with mcafee released a website which was titled contingency plan activated something big is coming the website is linked to mcafee's cryptocurrency whacked and has a timer countdown which ended on the 27th of july to date no bombshell information has been released some say it was all just a big scam suicide or not the death of john mcafee marks the end of one of the most eccentric tech moguls in history his legacy and the story surrounding him will be spoken about for many years to come from being a pioneer in distributing software over the internet and creating one of the first social media sites in history to being a wanted man for murder and tax evasion john's life was certainly a wild ride his story is interesting because he was clearly intelligent and a visionary in select areas but his character in history was so wild that you couldn't trust much of what he said so the question still remains was mcafee simply a crazed and troubled man who gave up in prison or did another party take him out nobody can know for sure but the comment section in this one will be very interesting so thanks for watching my name is degogo and you've been watching cold fusion and i'll see you again soon for the next video cheers guys have a good one [Music] foreign [Music] you

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 735,608

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: tteBgBngES8

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021