Thread by @vmyths

1/🧵
An innocent questioner came to me asking "Why do you start [see chart below] at 2021?"

And it stumped me. Because I've studied Steve Morgan's tweets enough to know he's touted "$3 trillion" since at least 2018.

So, why DID I start at 2021? Quite simply…

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…I had Morgan's more recent #guesstimates in front of me when I first decided to "chart the math."

Really, though, his multi-trillion $$$ guesstimates date back to 2016. And they're not … exactly … "scientific," if you know what I mean:

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Morgan's original multi-trillion $$$ #guesstimate waffled as it [d]evolved from 2016 through 2017 depending on whom he cited:

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On 29 January 2018, Morgan finally took a stand on "$3 trillion" annually since 2015 and made his first prediction of "$6 trillion annually by 2021."

Yet as you can see, Morgan cited — and embraced! — a "$3 trillion" #guesstimate from Microsoft's CEO:

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Morgan changed his tune less than two months later to stake his [company's?] own prediction that "Cybercrime damages will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion in 2015."

To the best of my knowledge, Morgan hasn't revealed his research methodology:

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Morgan finally swiped Satya's #guesstimate in August 2018. His tweets of late imply that Satya uses his SWAGs, not the other way around.

Morgan has since cornered the market for multi-trillion $$$ figures with "official" reports published by his Siamese-twin media company.

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Morgan took off with ✌️his✌️ multi-trillion $$$ #guesstimate and has since turned it into a string of ever-increasing values projecting into the future.

Morgan doesn't explain how previous guesstimates proved true. He just spouts them as a given fact while looking forward:

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In addition to Morgan, I also pound on cybersecurity #ThoughtLeaders who parrot his #guesstimates without extraordinary proof.

In this tweet series, I slammed @CompTIA — an industry testing & certification body! — for foolishly taking Morgan on faith:

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Few people respond when I ask questions that make them realize Morgan #ahem might just be making up numbers out of whole cloth.

Some *do* respond. Annnnnd I let the discussions end right there.

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Morgan has convinced numerous people to forward his tweets, perhaps in part because he's so relentless about it.

You'll see a "$10.5 trillion" #guesstimate tweet from him roughly every weekday.

Sometimes multiple tweets per day! He bragged it up three times on 2 August:

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At this point you might ask "who IS Steve Morgan?"

I kid you not:

Morgan is editor-in-chief of "Cybercrime Magazine" which ranked him among the top ten cyber journalists of 2021. It's published by "Cybersecurity Ventures" which Morgan founded 😬
cybersecurityventures.com/10-top-cyberse…

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So, let's wrap up Steve Morgan:

He runs an ethically dubious cybersecurity media outlet. He touts a series of multi-trillion $$$ #guesstimates yet has not showed how he derived his predictions. Shallow-thinking thought leaders take him entirely on faith.

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Okay, now, back to the innocent question that led me to reexamine my "Steve Morgan charts."

Morgan's 1/29/2018 tweet leads me to now start from 1/1/2015 at $3 trillion annually rising to $6 trillion in 2021, rising to $10.5 trillion in 2025.

Old chart vs. New chart:

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New "Steve Morgan charts" will use his simplistic predictions that ✌️cybercrime✌️ cost $3 trillion annually in 2015, $6 trillion annually in 2021, and $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.

It's that simple.

And it's that #ABSURD. Because it looks like this on 12/31/2025:

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Steve Morgan needs to give our industry a REAL "deep dive" into his empirical data and the extrapolation model he allegedly chose for his predictions. NOT THIS PIECE OF TRASH: