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Daina Bouquin: You are walking
home without an umbrella.

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The forecast said 60%, and you
did the math the way everybody

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00:00:30,320 --> 00:00:31,359
does the math.

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00:00:31,359 --> 00:00:33,840
Which is to say that you
didn't.

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00:00:33,840 --> 00:00:38,240
You looked at the sky and you
decided that it would hold.

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00:00:38,240 --> 00:00:41,280
So now you are hurrying.

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00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:46,640
Shoulders up, and the rain is
coming down in big, scattered

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00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:47,600
droplets.

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00:00:47,600 --> 00:00:50,960
You watch it land on the
sidewalk.

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00:00:50,960 --> 00:00:52,640
One drop.

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00:00:52,640 --> 00:00:53,200
Then a dozen.

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00:00:54,079 --> 00:00:58,320
Dark coins appearing on the
pale concrete in no particular

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00:00:58,320 --> 00:00:58,960
order.

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00:00:58,960 --> 00:01:03,759
You could not say where the
next one will fall.

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Nobody could.

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00:01:05,760 --> 00:01:07,280
Not you.

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Not whoever wrote the forecast.

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00:01:10,400 --> 00:01:13,280
Not anyone who has ever lived.

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00:01:13,280 --> 00:01:16,079
And that, right there.

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00:01:16,079 --> 00:01:18,480
The randomness.

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00:01:18,480 --> 00:01:22,079
That is one of the last wild
things.

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And it's everywhere.

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It is the exact fork of the
lightning.

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Drawn once across the dark and
never again.

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00:01:30,719 --> 00:01:33,519
It is the freckles on your arm.

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00:01:33,519 --> 00:01:37,439
It is the hiss between two
radio stations.

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00:01:37,439 --> 00:01:42,879
The world throws off randomness
the way it throws off heat.

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Constantly.

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For free.

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00:01:46,879 --> 00:01:49,280
You cannot bottle it.

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You cannot ask the storm to
wait.

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It falls and the randomness is
gone.

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Which would not matter at all
if we didn't need it.

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00:02:00,719 --> 00:02:04,000
But we do need it.

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We need it because it is how we
try to see the future.

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00:02:08,159 --> 00:02:13,360
To determine whether the river
comes over its banks tonight

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00:02:13,360 --> 00:02:14,639
while you sleep.

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00:02:14,639 --> 00:02:19,360
Whether the funnel touches down
on your street or one in the

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00:02:19,360 --> 00:02:20,639
next town over.

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00:02:20,639 --> 00:02:26,080
To see the future, we build a
little sky inside a machine.

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We tell the sky everything we
know about the air right now and

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00:02:31,039 --> 00:02:32,639
about physics.

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00:02:32,639 --> 00:02:36,639
And then we let it run the sky
forward, out ahead of the real

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00:02:36,639 --> 00:02:37,280
weather.

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00:02:37,280 --> 00:02:40,639
But the air will not sit still
to be copied.

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Miss one gust of wind, one
pocket of warmth too faint to

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00:02:45,680 --> 00:02:49,120
measure, and your little digital
sky evolves in the completely

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00:02:49,120 --> 00:02:50,319
wrong direction.

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00:02:50,319 --> 00:02:54,159
So we do not run the simulation
once.

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We run it 50 times.

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00:02:56,479 --> 00:03:02,719
And each run starts with a tiny
random nudge to stand in for

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00:03:02,719 --> 00:03:04,240
everything we don't know.

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00:03:04,240 --> 00:03:08,080
Each nudge creates a slightly
different tomorrow.

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00:03:08,080 --> 00:03:12,479
Then we count how many of those
tomorrows end in rain.

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00:03:12,479 --> 00:03:16,080
And here is the thing about the
machine dreaming up those

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00:03:16,080 --> 00:03:17,120
tomorrows.

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It cannot make a single one of
those random nudges on its own.

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00:03:22,800 --> 00:03:27,280
We had to find the randomness
somewhere and pour it in.

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00:03:27,280 --> 00:03:32,400
And the randomness we pour into
nearly every forecast, every

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00:03:32,400 --> 00:03:36,159
simulated flood, every imagined
storm.

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00:03:36,159 --> 00:03:38,960
It is not real.

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It's a counterfeit.

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00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:44,000
We faked it.

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00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:48,960
I'm Daina Bouquin, and this is
Found in the M achine.

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00:03:49,840 --> 00:03:59,439
To you understand why anyone
would fake randomness you have

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00:03:59,439 --> 00:04:02,240
to understand how hard the real
thing is to catch.

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00:04:02,240 --> 00:04:04,639
Go back to 1947.

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00:04:04,639 --> 00:04:08,800
To a low building in Santa
Monica, close enough to the

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00:04:08,800 --> 00:04:11,680
ocean that you could smell it if
you opened a window.

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00:04:11,680 --> 00:04:16,160
Where a new outfit called RAND
was doing mathematics for the

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00:04:16,160 --> 00:04:17,199
Air Force.

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Someone there needed random
numbers.

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Not a handful.

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A million.

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00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:27,279
Clean ones.

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00:04:27,279 --> 00:04:29,839
With no human thumb on the
scale.

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Because you could never get a
million random numbers out of a

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00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:34,319
person.

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00:04:34,319 --> 00:04:39,040
Ask anyone to rattle off random
digits and they will lean on

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00:04:39,040 --> 00:04:40,879
some without realizing it.

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They'll make little patterns
without meaning to.

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They'll say seven too much.

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People are pattern machines.

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It is one of the things we
cannot stop ourselves from

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00:04:53,680 --> 00:04:54,160
being.

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00:04:54,160 --> 00:04:56,879
And the people at RAND knew
that.

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00:04:56,879 --> 00:05:00,319
So they built a chaos engine
instead.

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00:05:00,319 --> 00:05:05,839
It was, more or less, an
electronic roulette wheel.

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00:05:05,839 --> 00:05:10,959
A wheel with 32 slots spun by
raw electrical noise.

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The frantic static inside a gas
tube, whipping through

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00:05:15,680 --> 00:05:19,439
thousands of revolutions and
landing on one number every

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second.

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It clattered.

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00:05:22,240 --> 00:05:23,519
It clicked.

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It punched its chaos into stiff
paper cards hour after hour,

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day after day.

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And it worked.

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Sort of.

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00:05:33,439 --> 00:05:36,959
Because it turns out that
building a thing with no habits

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00:05:36,959 --> 00:05:38,720
at all is almost impossible.

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00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:40,879
The tubes degraded.

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00:05:40,879 --> 00:05:43,920
They were sensitive to the
room's temperature.

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00:05:43,920 --> 00:05:47,199
They felt the grid's voltage
flutter when the building's

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00:05:47,199 --> 00:05:48,480
power dipped.

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00:05:48,480 --> 00:05:54,800
And slowly, quietly, a faint
shadow of a pattern would creep

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back in.

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00:05:55,439 --> 00:05:58,800
So you would have to shut the
machine down and tune it, and

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00:05:58,800 --> 00:06:00,879
then it would behave for a
while.

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00:06:00,879 --> 00:06:03,439
And then it would drift again.

110
00:06:03,439 --> 00:06:06,160
Which meant someone had to
check.

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00:06:06,160 --> 00:06:09,680
Someone had to take a million
numbers and hunt through them

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00:06:09,680 --> 00:06:11,439
for ghosts of a pattern.

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00:06:11,439 --> 00:06:15,839
Her name was Bernice Brown.

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Before Rand, she had been in
Ames, Iowa, at the statistics

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program that became the first
statistical laboratory in the

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country.

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In 1932, she became the second
person ever to earn a master's

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degree in statistics there.

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At RAND, once the machine had
spat out its million digits.

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Her job was to make sure they
were completely meaningless.

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00:06:40,800 --> 00:06:45,360
So she counted how often each
digit appeared.

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Whether pairs showed up too
often, whether runs ran too

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00:06:50,879 --> 00:06:57,040
long, test after test, by hand
and on IBM tabulating machines,

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feeding in tray after heavy tray
of punched cards, day after

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day, for years.

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00:07:04,560 --> 00:07:09,279
Tedious, physical, invisible
work.

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00:07:09,279 --> 00:07:15,040
And at the end of it all, after
tests and retests and one final

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00:07:15,040 --> 00:07:18,480
mathematical shuffle to scrub
out the machine's last stubborn

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00:07:18,480 --> 00:07:22,160
leanings, Bernice Brown signed
off.

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She wrote that nothing in her
tests argued against calling

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these numbers random.

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Not these are random.

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No one can ever prove that.

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Only I looked as hard as I know
how to look and I could not

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catch them being anything else.

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00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:46,160
Her certified numbers were
eventually printed and bound

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into a book.

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00:07:47,360 --> 00:07:52,879
A real book published in 1955
that you could order in the

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00:07:52,879 --> 00:07:53,360
mail.

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00:07:53,360 --> 00:07:58,319
It is called A Million Random
Digits with 100,000 Normal

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Deviates.

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00:07:59,199 --> 00:08:02,560
You can still buy a copy today.

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00:08:02,560 --> 00:08:04,800
And people did buy it.

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00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:08,959
Scientists, pollsters, lottery
designers.

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00:08:08,959 --> 00:08:13,759
For years, if you needed real
randomness, you did not make it.

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00:08:13,759 --> 00:08:15,439
You looked it up.

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00:08:15,439 --> 00:08:18,720
The book even came with
instructions.

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00:08:18,720 --> 00:08:21,600
You were not supposed to start
on page one.

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You were told to open the book
somewhere unpredictable and read

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00:08:25,759 --> 00:08:28,079
off in an unpredictable
direction.

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00:08:28,079 --> 00:08:32,320
Even the Book of Chaos needed
you to bring a little chaos of

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your own.

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00:08:33,279 --> 00:08:37,919
So this is what randomness cost
in 1955.

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A machine that fought you.

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00:08:40,480 --> 00:08:43,759
A woman who spent years
checking every digit.

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00:08:43,759 --> 00:08:47,840
A book of certified nonsense
that you kept on a shelf.

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Now, around that same time, a
man was lying in a hospital bed

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00:08:52,879 --> 00:08:53,919
playing cards.

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00:08:53,919 --> 00:08:59,440
His name was Stanisław Ulam,
and he was a Polish-American

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00:08:59,440 --> 00:09:00,559
mathematician.

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00:09:00,559 --> 00:09:04,240
In 1946, he had nearly died.

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00:09:04,240 --> 00:09:08,480
A sudden encephalitis, an
emergency brain surgery.

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And as he recovered, he played
solitaire.

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00:09:12,799 --> 00:09:16,480
And somewhere in there he got
curious.

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00:09:16,480 --> 00:09:20,399
What are the odds that a given
hand of solitaire can be won at

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00:09:20,399 --> 00:09:20,639
all?

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00:09:20,639 --> 00:09:25,200
He tried to work it out
properly with pure mathematics.

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00:09:25,200 --> 00:09:28,879
And the calculations just
ballooned beyond reach.

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00:09:28,879 --> 00:09:32,399
So he gave up on elegance and
just played.

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00:09:32,399 --> 00:09:34,320
Lots of hands.

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00:09:34,320 --> 00:09:37,200
And he counted how often he
won.

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00:09:37,200 --> 00:09:40,080
He figured, don't solve the
problem.

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Simulate it.

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00:09:42,240 --> 00:09:45,840
Run it over and over with the
deck shuffled differently each

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time, and let the count become
your answer.

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00:09:56,240 --> 00:09:59,360
Ulam brought that idea back to his colleagues and one of them saw immediately what it could do. His
name was John von Neumann, a

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00:09:59,360 --> 00:10:03,039
mathematician of terrifying
range who played German marching

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00:10:03,039 --> 00:10:07,279
music too loud in his office,
and who was, at that moment,

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00:10:07,279 --> 00:10:10,799
trying to understand what
happens inside an exploding

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00:10:10,799 --> 00:10:11,360
bomb.

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00:10:11,360 --> 00:10:14,480
You could write that problem
down in theory.

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00:10:14,480 --> 00:10:19,039
Every neutron, every trajectory
through a chunk of metal the

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00:10:19,039 --> 00:10:20,799
size of a grapefruit.

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00:10:20,799 --> 00:10:24,559
But solving it would take
longer than the universe has

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00:10:24,559 --> 00:10:25,360
been alive.

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00:10:25,360 --> 00:10:28,879
Or you could do what Ulam had
done with the cards.

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Follow one imaginary neutron.

188
00:10:31,759 --> 00:10:34,799
When it strikes a nucleus, roll
the dice.

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00:10:34,799 --> 00:10:36,720
Does it bounce?

190
00:10:36,720 --> 00:10:38,480
Is it absorbed?

191
00:10:38,480 --> 00:10:40,559
Does it split the atom?

192
00:10:40,559 --> 00:10:44,720
That random roll of the dice
would determine the outcome.

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00:10:44,720 --> 00:10:48,720
And von Neumann needed millions
of rolls.

194
00:10:48,720 --> 00:10:51,120
More than any book could hold.

195
00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:53,279
He came up with a trick.

196
00:10:53,279 --> 00:10:58,159
Take a number, square it, then
reach into the middle of the

197
00:10:58,159 --> 00:11:00,080
answer and pull out a few
digits.

198
00:11:00,080 --> 00:11:02,399
That's your next number.

199
00:11:02,399 --> 00:11:05,440
Now do it again and again.

200
00:11:05,440 --> 00:11:09,200
Plain, fast, repeatable
arithmetic.

201
00:11:09,200 --> 00:11:13,279
And if you squint, the numbers
it throws off look random.

202
00:11:13,279 --> 00:11:16,320
They jump around and feel
unpredictable.

203
00:11:16,320 --> 00:11:18,399
They are not.

204
00:11:18,399 --> 00:11:20,639
Of course they are not.

205
00:11:20,639 --> 00:11:24,960
Feed the trick the same
starting number, the same seed.

206
00:11:24,960 --> 00:11:27,919
And it hands you the exact same
sequence.

207
00:11:27,919 --> 00:11:31,360
There is no more chance in it
than in a times table.

208
00:11:31,360 --> 00:11:35,200
And nobody knew that better
than von Neumann.

209
00:11:35,200 --> 00:11:37,360
He said it himself.

210
00:11:37,360 --> 00:11:42,320
Anyone who uses arithmetic to
produce random digits is, of

211
00:11:42,320 --> 00:11:45,279
course, in a state of sin.

212
00:11:45,279 --> 00:11:49,919
For decades, the fakes were
good enough.

213
00:11:49,919 --> 00:11:53,919
Because for most of what we ask
randomness to do, a good fake

214
00:11:53,919 --> 00:11:54,879
is fine.

215
00:11:54,879 --> 00:12:00,320
For weather, for bombs, for the
slow patient work of science,

216
00:12:00,320 --> 00:12:04,080
von Neumann's sin was pretty
much good enough.

217
00:12:04,080 --> 00:12:08,320
But then we started asking
randomness to do something new.

218
00:12:08,320 --> 00:12:14,080
Not to imagine the future, but
to keep our secrets.

219
00:12:14,080 --> 00:12:18,639
You see, when you send a
message you do not want read, or

220
00:12:18,639 --> 00:12:23,600
when money moves, the locks
that protect all of it are built

221
00:12:23,600 --> 00:12:25,279
from random numbers.

222
00:12:25,279 --> 00:12:29,039
And a secret built on a fake is
just a secret waiting for the

223
00:12:29,039 --> 00:12:30,480
right person to notice.

224
00:12:30,480 --> 00:12:36,480
Like in 1995, two graduate
students at Berkeley noticed.

225
00:12:36,480 --> 00:12:40,559
They pulled apart the web
browser Netscape, which was at

226
00:12:40,559 --> 00:12:44,080
the time the front door to the
internet, and found that the

227
00:12:44,080 --> 00:12:47,840
quote, random numbers securing
its traffic, were seeded with

228
00:12:47,840 --> 00:12:49,919
things like the time of day.

229
00:12:49,919 --> 00:12:53,120
Not chaos, just a clock.

230
00:12:53,120 --> 00:12:56,240
And so in minutes the locks
came open.

231
00:12:56,240 --> 00:13:01,120
And so, after half a century of
getting away with it, we

232
00:13:01,120 --> 00:13:04,399
discovered that we still needed
the real thing.

233
00:13:04,399 --> 00:13:09,360
Genuine unpredictability,
caught from the physical world.

234
00:13:09,360 --> 00:13:11,519
Bernice Brown's kind.

235
00:13:11,519 --> 00:13:15,360
Computer science has a word for
it.

236
00:13:15,360 --> 00:13:18,159
They call it entropy.

237
00:13:18,159 --> 00:13:21,840
And we were sent back out to
hunt for it.

238
00:13:21,840 --> 00:13:25,360
Here is what we worked out.

239
00:13:25,360 --> 00:13:29,919
To keep our secrets, we do not
need a million real random

240
00:13:29,919 --> 00:13:30,639
numbers.

241
00:13:30,639 --> 00:13:34,960
We only need the starting
points, the seeds.

242
00:13:34,960 --> 00:13:39,360
Once you have a truly
unpredictable seed, the fast,

243
00:13:39,360 --> 00:13:41,840
cheap arithmetic can take it
from there.

244
00:13:41,840 --> 00:13:44,879
So the hunt became a hunt for
seeds.

245
00:13:44,879 --> 00:13:51,200
And once you go looking the
mess is everywhere, the thermal

246
00:13:51,200 --> 00:13:57,440
noise inside a resistor, the
decay of a radioactive atom, the

247
00:13:57,440 --> 00:14:01,600
jitter of the exact microsecond
you happen to move your mouse.

248
00:14:01,600 --> 00:14:06,480
Your computer is scavenging
entropy off of you right now,

249
00:14:06,480 --> 00:14:09,919
gathering up your tiny accidents
and pooling them like

250
00:14:09,919 --> 00:14:10,960
rainwater.

251
00:14:10,960 --> 00:14:16,240
And in one building in San
Francisco, a company called

252
00:14:16,240 --> 00:14:20,559
Cloudflare keeps a whole wall of
lava lamps.

253
00:14:20,559 --> 00:14:24,960
Blobs rising and folding and
splitting and never taking the

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exact same shape twice.

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A camera watches the wall, and
a computer turns every pixel,

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its position, brightness, and
color, into numbers.

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The exact posture of every slow
molten blob becomes a seed,

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feeding the cryptographic keys
that secure web traffic for

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millions of sites.

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If you walked in front of that
wall, your shadow would shape

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the randomness too.

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Some tiny fraction of the
internet's locks would be forged

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in part from the outline of
you.

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We built machines that can do
almost anything.

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They can play out fifty
tomorrows no problem.

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They can follow a neutron
through a bomb.

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00:15:21,279 --> 00:15:24,399
And lately they can talk.

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You may have had a conversation
with one recently.

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Every time one of those
machines chooses its next word,

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it rolls dice.

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And they are von Neumann's
dice.

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Fed at the very start by a seed
of real entropy scavenged from

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the physical world.

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Because that is the one thing
no machine can do.

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The most powerful things we
have ever built come to the

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physical world like beggars.

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To the static.

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To the lava.

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The machines cannot make it.

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Bernice Brown could spend years
checking and never prove it.

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Von Neumann could only fake it,
and the sky is giving it away

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for free.

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You feel it on the back of your
neck as you hurry home.

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I'm Daina Bouquin, and this is
Found in the Machine.

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If you enjoy these stories,
please rate and review this

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00:16:31,360 --> 00:16:33,440
podcast wherever you listen.