The Takedown of a Real Life "Walter White" - Ross William Ulbricht

Ross William Ulbricht, the internet drug kingpin behind the $1.2 b  hidden criminal website 'Silk Road' , would make the fictional meth lord Walter White drool with envy.  Like the fictional White, Ulbricht didn't know when to quit, but unlike White, he didn't go out with any blaze of redeeming glory or saving grace.

FBI agents arrested Ulbricht  - the notorious mastermind behind 'Silk Road' - on Tuesday,  in a San Francisco public library, in the science fiction section, if you can believe it .  Before being shut down Wednesday, Ulbricht's site functioned as an online contraband  market place complete with shopping carts, product descriptions for everything from illegal drugs (heroine, coke, meth, LSD, ecstasy) to guns to fake licenses and hacking services.

The Silk Road  - like Walter White's assorted front companies (i.e. the car wash run by Skyler) was set up to be completely anonymous. Users - both buyers and sellers- could make their  nefarious transactions in total secrecy away from the eyes of law enforcement - and even NSA' s prying PRISM and XKeyscore eyes.

'Silk Road'  used a cyber currency called "bit coins"  which, because they were independent of financial institutions,  made them hard to trace.  Ulbricht also designed his site outside the regular internet, setting it up on the TOR network- a service that allows users to use the web anonymously. Anything sent through this alternative internet was completely encrypted which is why it took 2 years for federal agents to crack the sites. Ulbricht also apparently tried to put a hit on  one Silk Road user black mailing him.


In August, FORBES got  Ulbricht, aka  "Dread Pirate Roberts" in an exclusive interview via a completely anonymous online chat after he refused to meet in person. Back then he wouldn’t reveal his full name or even nationality, stating that “the highest levels of government are hunting me.”

Like Walt, Ulbricht was no dummy. In fact, his background parallels the fictional Walter White's in terms of higher education. He attended the University of Texas at Dallas, where relatives say he was on full scholarship and studied physics. From there, he went on to be a graduate research assistant at Penn State University, earning his Master’s Degree in Materials Science and Engineering with a thesis entitled “Growth of EuO Thin Films By Molecular Beam Epitaxy.”

According to FORBES, after leaving Penn State in 2010, Ulbricht mentioned on his LinkedIn page that his “goals have shifted” and that he was moving away from his physics education and toward the study and use of economic theory to “abolish the use of coercion and aggression against mankind.”

Such flighty aspirations coming from a recent post graduate should always send up red flags. His libertarian fascination (with Ron Paul) also contributed to his 'above the law' mindset and perhaps his downfall. But let's make no mistake that "Dread Pirate Roberts" was no Heisenberg. His supremo error was using his real name via his email address, rossulbricht@gmail.com  in seeking tech help for problems with his site.  This is something Walt never would have done.

In addition, the downfalls of the fictional and real life drug lords are distinct. While Walt was brought down by his greed, as I noted in the last blog, Ulbricht's actual downfall was his hubris. This also likely contributed to the security blind spot that made him feel so unaware, or confident, that he could use his real name in getting tech  help.

In an interview with technology news site, The Verge, close friend René Pinnell, who lived with Ulbricht in San Francisco, was in disbelief that his roommate could have been the infamous drug kingpin named after a masked protagonist from fantasy film, The Princess Bride. He said he thought Ulbricht was trading the anonymous currency Bitcoin to make a living.

“I don’t know how they messed it up and I don’t know how they got Ross wrapped into this, but I’m sure it’s not him,” Pinnell said.

But one thing we do know, is that hubris and greed are more than sufficient to sink any wannabe criminal drug lord seeking to emulate Walter White.

Walter White's Saga: Why Would a High School Chemistry Teacher Go Bad?

'Breaking Bad', the fantastic AMC series is now in the can as far as television history is concerned. On Sunday night, the finale grabbed no fewer than 10.3 million viewers, as former chemistry teacher Walter White went down in a blaze of glory. He also showed he knew plenty of physics, in devising an electronically-triggered,  high caliber, rotating machine gun in his car trunk,  to annihilate most of the Nazi meth makers.

But the question that really emerges is: How did this one time high school chemistry teacher mutate into the greatest meth maker the southwest had ever seen, and even to the level of taking out Mexican cartels?   As a former chemistry teacher myself (in the Peace Corps) I enjoyed it as much as teaching physics later.  Probably the titration of weak acids with a strong base were my favorite experiments, though the students were more enthralled by the ones that created small, vigorous 'eruptions' in their test tubes, like adding magnesium metal to dilute hydrochloric acid, see e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeKsLi_6WkY.

Anyway, when I began watching 'Breaking Bad' five years ago, I was interested to see how it was that Walter White would want to go to the dark side. The answer arrived when he found out he had lung cancer, late stage lung cancer. Being in his late forties, this wasn't good news, because the health insurance he had provided a capped amount which would expire in no time with necessary chemotherapy treatments.

Walter probably knew even then that his treatments would ensure that his family would either go bankrupt or into massive debt. He'd also likely know that most bankruptcies in this country are medically -based. Either people lack any health insurance and they are afflicted with cancer or have a serious accident, or their insurance is inadequate to cover the costs over time, usually because most policies are capped at a maximum.

Faced with this stark choice, Walter - in cahoots with former student Jesse Pinkman- ends up making some of the purest meth ever seen. (Mainly because Walt is a chemistry task master, always imposing his high standards on his young apprentice who, if he had his way, would churn out any barely passable crap.)

Now, the rub arrives when he has "enough". Enough moola to cover his treatment costs with more than enough left over. But he - like many Americans, once they get the taste of newfound riches - doesn't want to stop at "enough". He wants more. At this stage, he transforms into the  quintessential American CEO, always spouting  figures and formulas to justify further expansion.  Alert viewers also would pick up on White's incessant citation of the 1 percent, and his insatiable drive to be part of it.


Well, from here it's all downhill, because to rise to the top Walt is forced to ruthlessly take out competitors, including the head of a Mexican cartel (Gus Fring) with one foot in the southwest U.S. By the end, in compiling his multi-millions, Walt has left a pile of bodies behind. As one blogger has put it aptly:

"It’s all there: the ego, the entitlement, the testosterone-fueled drive to come out on top, and the sense that money, not character or relationships, defines a person’s worth."

Walter White then has transmogrified into the epitome of the one percenter who scoffs at the little people and believes wealth defines worth. It is primarily this dynamic that fuels his unquenchable yen for ever more wealth, at great cost to his family and other relationships.  I would argue a similar dynamic is at work in wrecking the relationships of the wealthiest, as they grab for ever more - not to mention wrecking the country itself.

For make no mistake it is the wealthiest,  so many 'Walter White' clones - like the Koch brothers - who have brainwashed a third of the country into believing using a shutdown to get their way is the right thing to do.   As blogger Thomas Hartmann has put it:

"...despite the complete takeover of our political landscape by corporations and billionaires like the Koch brothers, the mainstream media has remained dead silent about the devastating effects of the disastrous Citizens United decision.

As a result, the majority of Americans have no clue what Citizens United is, let alone the damage it's done to our democracy and way of life."

At least, at the end, Walter White did the right thing and took out all the scum attempting to enslave Jesse Pinkman to make their meth. He also disposed of all his money, in his family's (son Flynn's) best interests.

Don't look for anything analogous (politically) to happen to the scum attempting to enslave Americans and hold them hostage to an Oligarchy wherein health care is denied and massive debt arising therefrom is the norm.