Philip has been associated with 13D for over 25 years. In the 1970s, he grew up building computers in his garage in Silicon Valley, where he studied electronics under John McCollum at Homestead High School, the same teacher of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak a few years earlier. Aside from computers, his other passion is art. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Boise State University, where he graduated magna cum laude with honors. He is a lifetime member of the honors society of Phi Kappa Phi. 

Johnson is fascinated by the “unknown unknowns,” and he believes that understanding the boundary conditions of knowledge is vital to security and threat analysis as technology rapidly accelerates the expansion of our socioeconomic universe. He feels that the geometric relationship of our knowledge to our ignorance was best expressed by the physicist J. A. Wheeler, who wrote: “We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.” Johnson believes it is extremely important to try and chart the evolving perimeters of our ignorance because those are the shores on which Black Swans arrive.