Enhancing Technology Evaluations with Futurum Signal | TSG Ep. 902

Hey everyone. It's time you read The Signal You're watching Text on Gang. Hi everyone, it's a Shiell.

Welcome to Thursday on the Gang. We've got, we've got a, a special episode for you today. We, we had a, you know, we've been working really hard, all the little workers, big workers, little workers at, at fu German that hard at work for months and months working on something that we really were, I know Daniel was busting to talk about it, excuse me.

But we really haven't been able to say anything until now. So we're really looking forward to talking about it. But, um, we're gonna be talking about something called FU Signal.

Let me introduce you quickly to our gang members today as we get started. First of all, joining us from Toronto, Garima Boal out west. He's our man in Silicon Valley.

John Swartz and Futurum, CEO founder Daniel Newman gang. Welcome Daniel. Let's jump right into this, man.

Futurum Signals. What are we talking about? I'm glowing ear to ear.

Now. First of all, anyone that knows me knows that when you say we've been working on something, it's, we've been working on some things. There's a lot of things that we're working on here.

But, you know, I've been around this industry. I started this company eight years ago, and from the time I started the company, I truly believe this industry was fundamentally broken. Um, the way technology decisions have been made for the longest time have been friction laden.

They've been slow information is often a year or two years old. And the inflection to, to change the calculus on how this all gets done really came when AI started to proliferate at scale. When we saw, you know, how much faster, uh, tools can be developed, how much more interactive people are, uh, you know, we've entered an era where people would rather interact with a chat bot.

People would rather talk to a generative AI LLM to get information. Um, but we've also entered an era where we have to move incredibly fast. If you're a board of director, a CEO, uh, it leader, CIO, right now, you are under incredible pressure from your company to make a pivot that you've never seen because you actually have never seen technology move this fast, and you don't actually know how all these things are gonna work.

But what you know for sure is if you're a company that you know is in a services business, like, uh, you hear a lot of things right now about McKinsey or you hear about, you know, what Gartner's doing, and it takes you 15 or 16,000 people to generate a series of reports that look two years into the past to help people make decisions on how to spend millions or billions of dollars in the future. It's just fundamentally broken. So over the last few weeks, we've done a lot of things and made some serious announcements, uh, last week, uh, and depending when you're watching this, it was a week ago here in, uh, August of 2025, it partnered with G two.

And for those of you that don't know G two, we became the exclusive utili, uh, provider of G two signal inside of our evaluations. And that provided over 3 million customer reviews that are now AI powered in real time. Now with our signal.

What we're doing is we're combining our proprietary data, our insights, our analysis, our research, our media, our content, and we built a completely AI powered real time dynamic evaluation that instead of looking at where things are today, or even worse, where things were one or two years ago, um, we are looking a year into the future or more, and we are gonna help those that evaluate technology and those that are making the most important decisions about their company's futures, make better decisions with the best information in a platform that feels just like you're using chat GPT. And so it's a win for everybody in this industry, and it's in market starting on August 20th. So this isn't some vaporware, this isn't even as bad as when I announced future AI two years ago, and we were trying to pilot this thing.

We announced it, we saw it coming, we put our heads down, we did the work, and you out there, the customers, the vendors, the implementers and the executives are gonna be the beneficiaries, and that couldn't be more exciting. Absolutely. Um, I'm gonna jump in and then Reemer John, feel free.

So, you know, Daniel, I I just published an article this morning about the ever increasing complexity of it, right? And there are plenty of studies, as you said, old, old school studies, old style studies that look at what's been going on the last six months, nine months, year, two years. But it's clear that whether it's entropy or something else, you know, there's laws of physics at play, it is becoming more complex, and we can look at AI as something that can help solve that complexity or something that contributes to that complexity.

It sounds to me like you are saying Signal helps solve that complexity. I mean, you're in this business, right? I mean, we're partners, we work in the business.

You're, you're very dedicated in the security, DevOps, and AI space. You work with lots of small, uh, companies, startup companies that are trying to break through and enter, first of all, you would agree with me, right? That AI has probably been the most revolutionary and the most level setting in terms of giving companies that have lot, a lot less size and a lot less scale, the opportunity to, to build things that the market can desire, right?

Even like an open ai, right? The fact that they were able to even come in and compete with a Google, with a Microsoft, or in some cases, even their technology so good at supported a Microsoft that they're able to, you know, is, is a sign of the positive disruption, but it's also a sign of the speed that's actually putting legacy businesses at risk. So over the last few weeks, you heard me mention it before you, you know, you saw articles come out, you know, Bloomberg reached out to me and asked me about AI sensitive businesses, um, and their disruption.

We saw companies including those in our industry. Like I said, those that are heavily consultant and persona based organizations see their stocks drop 30 or 40%. And by the way, Ellen, it's not just, it's not just services companies.

We saw SaaS companies because we all know that AI is eating software. And so the fact of the matter is, is that entire industries are being upended. And I always like to say slow at first, then all at once.

So for the last two years, I've been kind of pulling the alarm, but just like in the big short, if anybody's seen that movie, you know, being early can also be the same thing as being wrong. You know, when you get too early on the trade. So for two years, everybody, you know, I'm sitting there, I'm screaming, I'm like, AI is gonna change this business, it's gonna change it.

And everyone's like, ah, it's fine. Nothing's changed. Earnings are great.

Service businesses are, are are booming. And by the way, a lot of AI comp, a lot of companies that can support AI consulting have done quite well. You know, you look at IBM, their IT consulting business completely went away, but their AI consulting business exploded, right?

But at some point, this stuff becomes more and more self-actualizing, it becomes more autonomous, and the companies can move a lot faster with a lot less bodies. So we have to build something that can move as fast as the way people want information that's not done with six months of meetings and inquiries and forms that need to be filled out. This happens when you can take the vast, uh, corpus of information that's available in the markets.

We take the everyday interactions, the media, the press, the data, company's own releases, voice of customer data, and we're able to put all that together and actually give very realistic, highly tuned insights as to where the market is going, the trend lines, the buying decision data, the, uh, market size data. We can put all that together and we can basically make some as assessments. And in an era, and you've heard me say this all, at least you have Alan, in an era where data and information is largely become commoditized, the ability to provide knowledge and wisdom.

And I think McKinsey put that out there with some level of empathy. My little add to that knowledge, wisdom with empathy is going to win the day. And the more we can make it seamless, you know, in the way that we interact with our cons, our, our commerce every day, the way we interact with the information sourcing every day is going to enable us to deliver what the market has failed to do.

So I believe the companies that that we compete with absolutely have the chance to, to, to go after this. I think companies like Gartner have an amazing corpus of data. They have an amazing ac uh, access to their customers, but they're also gonna have to make meaningful decisions of how they scale their company.

They can't ask you to have 10 meetings with 20 different analysts that are focused on one tiny sliver of the market. They're gonna need to figure out a way to right size the business to make all that information useful and deliver it in a way that's modern. We can't keep asking people to have all these meetings and all these face-to-face and attend all these events.

And by the way, we do all this stuff. So it's self disruption. I'm not sitting here saying we don't have to disrupt ourselves.

I'm just saying being a little smaller, having a little smaller fleet of people and being a little more platform centric allows us to be nimble and allows us to go fast. And this is absolutely what I believe The right Decision of how to go forward is or looks like. You know, can I, if I can just jump in for a second.

Yeah. You know, so this is kind of what I, from a journalism prism, this is one of my conundrums or has been for years. AI is, is never been faster.

Speed is everything in this era. And as a reporter for years, I've struggled with getting market research reports that I know were obsolete or almost, uh, outdated because they were based on something that happened three months or six months ago. So the idea, the concept of this to me is very useful.

So I just wanted to throw the, I just wanted to throw that in because for me, it's essential. And, you know, having worked with Daniel as a reporter source for years, this is something I think that's, that's been lo long overdue. Absolutely.

Daniel, I, I've got two, two comments, questions, and Greer. John, you could jump in on these as well. Number one, you know, you mentioned Techron.

Most of our customers, not necessarily people watching this, but our sponsors are startup companies. I, I've been a startup founder multiple times. Traditionally, analysts are expensive, right?

We all had to pay the kind of blood money, or whatever you want to call it, the ransom, right? To, to, to get in front of some analyst and, and maybe get into a magic quadrant or what. And I'm not just singling out Gartner, but for many of us, Gartner was the first and only analyst we would pay.

Um, and, but we always felt like the good stuff was a little out of our reach. It was just too expensive. It was a big boys game, right?

It was for the IBMs of the world. Is Signal a a equalizer? Is Signal a a democracy bringer to bringing this kind of analysis to companies large and small?

We see, well, there's two sides of this. So we still think in a world where content, the information is so easily created with ai, and the data is so easily abstracted, that influence and attention will be the currency of which most, uh, startups and technology companies are going to need to invest. Meaning, how do you stand out when it's even harder to stand out?

So we do believe that what made that pricing a asymmetry so significant was there was a time when that was the only way to be seen. Meaning you wanted to be seen in lights next to these other companies that were considered leaders and established to just put your name in the conversation. Okay?

So we are absolutely building our product and platform to provide more access to pro to provide levels of, of entry levels. You know, we've got a emerging vendors category where vendors will be able to be seen, and then we will have sub reports and, and, uh, you know, assets that will be, uh, available for those companies that got mentioned, maybe didn't hit our, it didn't quite hit our, our, our, our signal entirely. But we also are building a platform and an AI based subscription service at Futurum that allows those smaller vendors to get access at a smaller level, but an entry level that's actually affordable and achievable for these smaller companies.

And I'm really excited about that because, you know, we do believe that a lot of these smaller companies, they're looking for a little visibility. com, they're looking for maybe, uh, a mention on a podcast that one of our team members do, or this show itself. Um, and so working with us, we don't only do just the research, just the data, just the analysis, just the evaluation.

But of course, we've got this whole plethora of media events. We've got field days, we've got six five, we've got testing labs and assessments. We've got Techstrong.

We've got all these places become accessible to our vendors. So we absolutely believe that the longer tail is important that we provide optionality and, and, and, and programs, products, platforms, and subscriptions for these smaller vendors. Um, and the big thing to remember, Alan, and you've been around long enough to know this, is some of these vendors start small and they become very, very large.

And so it's quite nice when you're there and you were there in the beginning when they were growing and coming up, and you were there to give them advice. You were there to help, you were there to give access to meaningful information, important signal that they're going to use and carry into their growth phase. Because I certainly believe that the companies that are the biggest today won't all be the biggest companies in the future.

Um, it's been the truth for hundreds of years. This has continued to happen. The only thing that's moving faster is disruption.

So the period of time in which leaders stay leaders in most cases are shorter, um, except maybe the Mag seven, because when you're worth $4 trillion, it's gonna take quite a long time for, for that, that far to fade. But you are seeing a lot of big established technology companies that are kind of falling down the ladder. Companies that absolutely own the SAS era companies that absolutely own the software and infrastructure eras that are now having to take back seats to the companies that came up, the companies that disrupted.

And so we wanna be there to help those companies stay on top. And we also want to be there to help the new companies rise. And so I think this is just one part.

And by the way, the signals just one thing of many more that we're gonna be doing that is gonna continue to change this industry. I, I don't make those kinds of promises lightly. I expect that the things that we're gonna do in the coming weeks and months will continue to, to send meaningful vibes to the industry about what they can look forward to in the future.

All right. Hey, I, I know you gotta get outta here top of the hour, but, um, August 20th is the date, right? August 20th.

Um, hopefully you guys will share a little more info in the show notes to send a link. People that wanna learn more, um, we would love to, you know, hear from y'all. Uh, anyone that's out there knows you can find me on x my little, little tags down below.

Uh, I'm not, I'm not hiding. My opinions aren't hiding either. You can find 'em all over the internet.

Um, and, uh, you know, I'm excited to continue to work with the industry, uh, bring great empathy, um, great humility and, you know, continue to make this industry super relevant in a feature that will be powered by AI and technology. ai that I wrote that has a bunch of information, even a sneak peek of one graphic of what this looks like. But, um, you, you could check it out there.

Um, Daniel, Hey man. Thanks. I, I think one last thought I wanna leave our audience with.

This is a, a momentous moment, I think, in the consulting analyst industry because it moves it from a services to a product. And I, you didn't mention it, Daniel, but I, I feel that's an important distinction, right? 'cause services means it's, it's like tied into a human how many humans you have working at it, and you just gotta throw more humans at it.

Yeah. When you have a product, I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, uh, my parting words are, you know, we, we were a 90% services company with 10% products.

And I see us quickly driving towards a 80% platform company with 20% value added services. And I think that's where you wanna be right now. I don't think you wanna be a heavily services oriented company that just, uh, grows on, on, on headcount.

I think you have to be thinking about how to scale, because, you know, we've left the, even, this is the greatest parallel I'll give you, but in, in SaaS it was always user based. But in the era of ai, it's gonna be token based. And so when a company can be a thousand times more productive with 10% of the head counts, you're gonna want to charge on tokens, on outputs, and on outcomes, not on, on seats.

And so every business has to think about how to adjust for that. And so, and one thing I'll say is, 'cause, you know, I talk about great empathy, but is like, when it comes to humans, I mean, humans are gonna be incredibly important in this transition, but I do very much look at it through the lens of Pareto. You know, the 80 20 rule is the 20% that are incredibly important and, and incremental and, and, and exponential to their businesses will only become more important in this era.

And that's why I genuinely recommend everybody out there learn to make AI your business partner, make it your partner. It, it is a super, uh, accelerator of your skills. You can go faster in everything you do.

And so 10 x yourself and you will be invaluable to the organization. Um, and you will make yourself part of this incredible journey ahead. Absolutely.

Hey, Daniel, are, we're gonna let you run you churn signal. Check it out. We're gonna take a break here on the gang.

We're gonna come back and talk about is perplexity buying Chrome? Why? Stay tuned.

You're watching Textron Gang, Discover Textron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation. We are your go-to for reaching IT, leaders and practitioners worldwide. Our secret impactful content that sparks awareness, engagement, and top quality leads with us.

You'll access editorial websites, streaming videos, virtual events, custom content analyst research, and more. Join our satisfied clients. Let's revolutionize your tech journey.

Contact us today and tell your story to the world in the most powerful way with Techron Group. 5 billion, reportedly. Now, no one seems to know if this is a serious thing or if it's just some sort of PR stunt, but John, you're out in the valley and what are they saying?

Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's a PR stunt. Um, th this, this idea, this, uh, concept of perplexity spending twice its valuation to acquire Chrome at the, at a at a time when the federal antitrust legis litigation against, uh, alphabet could force divest divestiture of the, of, of the browser seems like a play for pr.

Remember, this is the same company Perplexity back in January that proposed a, a bid to merge itself with TikTok us. Uh, also, uh, a victim of a, of us concerns over tiktoks Chinese ownership. So we had the same situation six months later, seven months later.

Um, the, the, the idea of perplexity buying Chrome was characterized even in the journal story as a long shot. Um, the company insists it's lined up several investors and can do it. Um, the guest we just had, Daniel Newman, I asked him about this when it was breaking, and he said, there is quote, a 0% chance Google spins Chrome to perplexity.

Uh, my, what my, I would suggest is that Perplexity actually itself might end up being acquired either by Apple or Meta. Meta took a look at them before they went to scale ai. So, uh, perplexity actually might be in play more than anything else.

Um, this is a, a very bizarre story. It was almost like a trial blown, it was almost like a play for pr. I, I just find myself, as Mike said in, um, our nutshell notes.

This is a very perplexing situation. Perplexing a perplexity, huh? What a revolt in development.

But let me, let me, let me, let me take a, a con contrary position. I don't think this was just a PR stunt. I, I think Perplexity, first of all, is on to something that, hey, when gov, it's almost like a fire sale, right?

When companies have to react to government regulatory actions, TikTok must be sold. We can't sell CPUs to China. Oh, we can, if we pay 'em, um, we, we gotta spin off the browser.

We gotta charge for the av it pro it pre, it's a distressed buyer, right? It's a distressed sale. Excuse me, not a dis, you know, so they're looking to scoop up and 34, 30 $5 billion may be cheap for a browser that controls I think 60 or 70% of the market or something like that.

On top of that, there's a couple of other things. Perplexity would get access to oodles and oodles and pets and whatever's after pets and petters and of data. I think, you know, I read an interesting article or LinkedIn post by Reen Cohen, I don't know if any of you guys follow Reen Reen was one of the leaders in Cloud Gima, you're shaking your head.

Yeah. Hello, fellow Canadian. Yeah.

And yes, he's a fellow Canadian, brilliant, brilliant guy. Reen looked at the, uh, GPT five, and it does something, you know, it's definitely an improvement somewhat over four. But he said the problem that the ai, the model, the frontier model guys have, they've run outta data.

They've scraped the internet clean to the best that they can, and in order to continue to make the kind of growth and improvements and leaps and bounds that we've seen up to now, they need fresh data. It could be synthetic data, but we don't know how good that's gonna be and how much of it can you generate. But I would imagine getting access to the kind of data you could get to from Chrome is going to fuel the next iterations, the next models that we, they build their ais on.

And, and that could, that alone may be worth that kind of money, right? Oh, Yeah. On the surface, no, it all makes total sense.

The motivation is clearly there. I just don't think they have the tools necessary to do it. And, and by the way, o Open AI and Duck Deck go have also expressed interest in buying Chrome, perhaps as a distress sale, if it's, if it's forced to happen.

5 billion Chrome users. I think there are 8 billion people on the planets. So, I mean, the motivation is there.

I just don't know practically if it could happen with perplexity, it Sounds like. So Assuming, assuming that Alan is ripe for a minute, why in God's name would Google wanna do this deal? Because it's just setting up, like not just some random competitor, but a serious competitor, and I think serious A gun to their head, Right?

Well, I think they're gonna look for somebody to give go Chrome to who maybe is not such a threat and something that will just let it kind sit off something Who buys it's a threat, instantly becomes a threat. And also, this is a very Gordon Gecko moment, right? Um, you, you don't know, I mean, there are ways you could structure a deal behind this.

It may be perplexity buying it with a bunch of investments lined up in them. You know, think about Microsoft's investment in open AI or something like that, where someone else, not just perplexity, but through perplexity, could step in and have a pretty amazing, pretty amazing deal. Maybe Google themselves.

Another reaction I had to this, Alan, is, is this seemed to me it could backfire on perplexity. This could start the, uh, the bidding war or Chrome too, and, you know, put 'em out of the league for it. Also, look at that, I think Interesting here is, Let Garima go.

Go ahead. Yeah. I, what I think is interesting here is two things.

You know, keeping aside, you know, the speculations, there are two things which will happen from this point onwards. One is, people are already talking about the AI browser race. And you know, we have touched upon that part, right?

You know, how, uh, the traffic, how the data, how the monetization also, how the integration of AI into browsers would kind of steer new investments, right? So it, uh, the browsers are not only, um, an application anymore. It becomes a platform for AI agents and doing stuff, right?

So a a lot of like, uh, privacy direction of, you know, how web will be enabled by AI is kind of, you know, in making, so somebody who's investing or has an intention of investing into this space is also clearly indicating that they are setting the direction for web ai, for example, right? So it's more than you know, what, uh, you see on the surface. And there is a lot more to be discussed from a technology perspective, because at the core, people can question, you know what, this is an open source based on chromium, right?

So why should we pay, uh, this billion dollars for that, right? So it's, it's not only data war, it's also like setting the direction for the next, uh, web AI and how that will shape up. I'll go a step further, and maybe perplexity is somebody else's stalking horse and somebody who wants this, but Google wouldn't sell it to them.

So now I'll put perplexity in there, we'll throw some cash their way. And then, you know, after the deal is done, six months later, perplexity is picked up by, who knows John's Point, apple or somebody. But maybe it's a more deliberate strategy, Thus my Gordon Gecko strategy.

Yes, agreed. It is good. Agreed.

Here's the another thing I wanted to mention, and that is, you know, Chrome, Chrome became the winner of the browser wars, and these browser wars have been going on almost since the internet went commercial. Netscape to Internet Explorer, internet Explorer to Mozilla, then Chrome. Microsoft's been trying to get back into it ever since.

I feel like I'm ing the wacky racers on the Saturday morning tv, right? Penelope Pit stopped, Dick dastardly, you remember that show? But, uh, you gotta be of a certain age.

But anyway, um, the, the fact of the matter is the next stop on the browser war race circuit is not Monte Carlo, but it's the AI browser, right? Perplexity has an AI browser already. I think it's available to their highest tier customer.

Yep. Uh, OpenAI, uh, I'm on the waiting list for whenever that comes out. Um, I think others, right?

Are we about to see the, the next iteration of the browser Horse and Perplexity is looking to, you know, take a, a what do they call it in horse racing, when you have a one and a one A in a, in a race, two horses in the same stable. Mm-hmm. Uh, and maybe, maybe that's the play here.

I don't know. I'm not enjoying my AI browsing experience anymore than my existing browser experience now. I feel like I'm Don't, don't think, I don't think this next generation of AI browsers is really, I don't know if you've played with it yet.

I don't know if any of us have, unless I I think you gotta be paying complexity, some good money to use their browser, but it's supposed to be a very different experience. Well, what I've seen so far, especially from Google, is, you know, basically annoying summarizations of things that are now getting in the way of the ads that I can't get through to get to what I actually wanted to see in the first place. So I'm just kind of shaking my head at the whole way.

Well, we're gonna, we're gonna clearly know where, what's gonna happen soon, because I think this month, the judge, um, who, who's looking at this case is gonna decide whether Crumb has to be divested from Google. So it's gonna happen any day. And there might be, there might be a bidding more, maybe Perplexes just trying to get to the front of the line.

Sure. John, that's naive. That's naive.

John. This is gonna have to be, you're Not the first person to call me naive. No, But this is the look, anything like Google having to divest itself of Chrome is gonna go right up to the big man, and he'll make this, Oh, wow, I see where this is going.

Okay. You know, maybe he'll take 15%, 20%, but courts don't get to make these decisions anymore in this country. Oh, gotcha.

I I I stand corrected. Sorry. Um, So wait, will there be, will, will, will Google just make a trip to Mar-a-Lago and make the whole thing go away?

Is that what you're saying? It worked for Intel. They gotta wait in line behind, uh, Lipton, Nvidia A d It worked Apple, it worked for until work for Nvidia.

Why won't it work for Google? Who does? You know, this is, uh, this reminds me of a story.

And I was a young boy. My grandfather rest his soul. My grandfather was a contractor, general contractor in New York City, and the biggest building project in New York City in the early sixties, early to mid sixties was the New York World's Fair.

And quite truthfully, I'm too young. I, I might have been there as a toddler, but I don't remember, but I think it was like 63, 64, 65, maybe Mike or 65 Was World's Fair. Yeah.

Something my, my my my father worked there on some side gigs during the, during his railroad days. They were paying good money for anybody. They were paying good money.

My, my grandfather did a lot of construction there, but you know, the World's Fair was run by a guy named Robert Moses. And, you know, he's the subject of a, a subject of a great book by Robert Carrow, like the Master Builder or something. Robert Moses, the Power broker.

I, I, I finished reading it. 1300 pages. Yeah.

Amazing, amazing story. Amazing. But true story.

The man built all the bridges and tunnels, all the highways, all the parks, kicked the Dodgers outta Brooklyn and everything else, and the Giants out in New York. But my grandfather used to tell me that in order to get any projects at the World's Fair, he used to have to go to Belmont Park, which wasn't just the race track. There was a park there, and that's where Robert Moses had an office and his brother was there, and you had to bring the brother a suitcase of money, and then you would get your contract signed.

And that's really how it worked in New York in in those days. I don't know how different things are now. Now you're just, today you just go find a union guy and a bar.

That's a separate story. Um, I think, uh, you know, it's interesting you bring all this up. I was just in an antique store store a couple of weeks ago, and I bought a little bowl from the World's Fair from 1964, so I was a little souvenir kind of thing.

So it's floating around in the back Office. Yeah. Very interesting.

But, but, you know, but nevertheless, look, the point is stranger things have happened. And, and in a world where you can make deals like this and, you know, the old rules don't seem to apply. What's, you know, this could, this could happen.

It could happen. We'll see. Never say never.

Mm-hmm. Never say never. All right, let's take a break.

I, I mentioned Intel. We're gonna come back and talk more about that. You're watching Textron.

com is the leading resource for news analysis and education on challenges facing the cybersecurity industry. com covers all aspects of cybersecurity, including data security, DevSecOps, cloud security, application security, network security, security threats, and more. com has the largest selection of security content featuring breaking news, blog posts, podcasts, and more.

com to learn more. com. Home of security bloggers network.

All right, folks, we're back. And our third segment deals with, well, another issue involving CEOs and the president, the CEO of Intel apparently went to see the president, ended the proverbial knee, and suddenly everybody's all good with each other. Helen, we were talking about this in a show earlier this week, but what do you make of all this?

What do I make of all this? You don't really wanna know, do you? Um, you know, again, we live in interesting times, right?

Mitchell, I think you said it when we discussed this earlier the week, that, hey, if the Intel CEO goes there with some 24 Carrick gold kind of bobble or something, you could probably get this undone. Well, Tim Cook style. Yes.

Yeah. I guess, I guess that's what happened. But you know, it, it, it's such a, this is such a signature moment of the insanity that we're living in that Monday.

We spoke about how the president, who has inserted himself as the defacto manager of our high tech industry, 'cause of course he knows better than any of these people do on Monday, said, the man must resign immediately, immediately. Thank you very much. Or whatever.

However, he ends his, his fiats. And then as John wrote, uh, he, he went, he brought whatever he brought to him, I don't know if it was a suitcase of cash ilo Robert Moses or, or, or a 24 carat bobble or something, or some kind of deal. And now all of a sudden, what a fine gentleman this Intel CEO is, and we may laugh.

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mitch. It, it reminds me not to, to make this, uh, you know, the day I ascended the mountain to get, you know, a, a word of it, of wisdom from Alan Shimmel.

But I recall back years ago, you said something to me that I still remember today and that, and it was went something like, today's golden child is tomorrow's blank head. Yeah. You know, Uhhuh, it's, it's very much.

And, and, and Could be, well, this was reversed, could be's. He was, he was the head. Now he's the golden child.

Now he's back the golden child again. So, had we finished the last segment, never say never. It Seems like that That's where we're at.

But here's the thing, you know, of course one may wanna ask, well, what deal was made here? Our deal was made here that, that allowed this, that, that this just changed everything. And now I have another theory.

I was talking about it because by the way, when I saw your article, John, I sent it to our friend Jack Poer, you know, who is, he was so dead set. What, how this intel, CEO was so guilty, guilty, guilty. And Trump was doing the right thing.

And, and of course, you know, and, and granted That that's a little harsh, but okay, Well, kettle Boy a apologetic matter. He said, well, you know, he, these guys know better than us. I don't think they know better than us.

I learned that lesson in my career. Don't assume people know better than you. 'cause they don't often more than often.

So, but anyway, here's my theory. Well, There, there, there's an announcement is gonna come. I mean, they, Trump can't help himself.

He, what he wrote on truth social was that Mr. Tan and my cabinet members are gonna spend time together and bring suggestions to me during the next week. So we will hear how they bend at the knee.

Just this, They added hundred million dollars. How much el d****e, d****e or d****e or whatever. What's his beak?

I'm trying to figure out though, how the hell all this got started, because as far as I can tell, Tom Cotton or the Senator from Arkansas teed off on this, Trump picked up on it. Tom Cotton know, I believe he's from Nebraska. No, I believe he's Nebraska.

I believe it's from Well, that, And Blaming Nebraska again, and Don't blame Nebraska. What I'm trying to figure out is who put this bug in Tom Cotton's ear, who is not known for any being the brightest bulb in the Senate, and b wouldn't know a semiconductor from a potato chip. So what the hell, where did this all start, John?

Did anybody talk About Oh, well, probably, yeah. You know, it could have been one of the minions of, of, of the Trump administration could have been a competitor. For all we know.

I mean, Jesus Christ. Oh, the Heritage Foundation. It's, it's, it's just like, it's Trump deals in gossip, innuendo, rumors, conspiracies.

You know, you say, you mention anything, float anything to him, he'll, he'll run with it. And, and you know, he, he assumes this guy, uh, Bhutan is a, is a spy. And then he decides, oh, he is a very successful, nice businessman after he meets him.

Has Trump or Cotton ever used? I mean, do they use computers at all? Have they ever used them?

I know Trump hasn't. Anyway, I'll stop. So, so clearly, clearly somebody put a bug in Tom Cotton's ear.

Now did they do that because they have motivation to do that? Was it a competitor? Was it somebody sitting on the board who was arguing with the CEO of this thing?

I mean, this newsworthy some additional investment? Well, That's, ask you, Mike, that's a very interesting point you make about the board, because the intel board is a disaster. I mean, there's no, I don't think there's any debate Or that it's a per respect.

It's a, it's A vibrate. And you know what? Tan, tan kind of fed off through there to get rid of Gelsinger.

And maybe some people have turned on him. It's, it's just self-feeding a fren. It's this company.

So you watch your back. I feel like I should ripped off my mask. And it's Pat Gelsinger here, Pat Gel All along.

So, So lemme make up a scenario. I don't think it's the truth, but it's, it's in the realm of possibility. You can imagine someone going to Trump or whoever and saying, you know what Intel is just needs to be knocked down a peg and needs to come, come to us with a hat and hand and make a deal.

So, hey, hey, who, who can do that? Tom Cotton? You issue a, a memo, you know, giving them the business and I'll whack on it, on, on true social and pump it up.

And guess who's gonna become knocking on our door in, in a day or two? Well, maybe something like that. Maybe it was intentional.

You Know, I, I'd Mitch, I wouldn't put it past these brilliant gentlemen. I, it would be a lot simpler just to make a phone call to accomplish that goal. I'm, I don't think, no, I, I think Tom Con was looking, I think Tom, Tom Cotton got his pound of flesh in terms of PR and his bonafides in the maga maga crusade.

But that being said, here's the, here's the real truth, guys. Intel is too big to fail. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And I think someone got a hold of Trump and said, Hey bucko, you keep talking in truth social like that, you're gonna drive Intel down. And then we don't have an American manufacturer.

And that's pretty funny that Trump would get behind the company because they're too big to fail. 'cause I remember him having an awful big mouth when they bailed out the banks that were too big to fail in the recession. But sitting in big chair, he does the same thing.

Yeah. If he would've done it, build him out, he wouldn't have a problem with it. This, this is a radical thought, but what happens one day when Intel wakes up and says, you know, this is just a little too much noise for me and we're just gonna move this whole thing to Taiwan or somewhere else.

I don't. Well, but here's another thing. I, I read an article, one of the former Intel CEOs, and I don't remember who now, not Gordon, you Said Craig Barrett, perhaps?

Craig Barrett. Craig Barrett, yeah. Craig Barrett.

I, I Saw that story. Yeah. Put out a, uh, you know, some information that look, he thinks, and you don't break Intel out, number one.

Number two, Intel needs about $40 billion to get competitive quick and, and Right. The ship right there. And, but that Intel is basically an American institution and worthy and I, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see the US taking a golden share in Intel this way.

Donald can run it day to day as he likes. 'cause who knows better than him? And, and Intel gets $40 billion.

You, you heard it here first. Mm-hmm. There you go.

Gordon Ley. I had Coco and I need them. Come on, man.

Oh geez. Oh God. Doing somersaults.

I'm sure. Unless I say Gordon Gecko again. But anyway, that's enough.

But it is interesting. And you know, and, and we can't blame this on ai, but the news cycle here of Monday to, we, we recorded this on Wednesday, how quickly mm-hmm. These things are.

But it, it's, it's that kind of chaos and uncertainty that I think winds up bringing this whole thing down because industry and business, it, it doesn't do well with, with that kind of yo-yoing, my 2 cents. I'm Not think it's such a, yo-yo, they're ignoring it. Well, maybe they don't ignore the initial yank of, you know, Intel stock takes a drop.

But rule point, it's kind of becomes noise. So I guess it's, it's, I think there, there are more long-term consequences for this. Like be moving beyond the controversy and the political, you know, stakeholder alignment and all that.

I think it also is dangerous for trust as well as, uh, you know, commitment towards the people who are actually working for emerging technology. So you can't compromise the trust and the commitment, otherwise you'll fall short of the talent pool you have. To me, It all sounds like Yahoos and yo-yos gonna be like, gonna be fun.

Buckle in guys. We're in for a rough trip. Alright, I, I think that's gonna do it for us on the, uh, on the gang today.

I, I know it was a little disjointed. We had Daniel in here on Signal earlier and, and then covered our normal stuff. Garima, John, Mitch and Mike, thanks for joining.

We hope you've enjoyed this. Again, Futurum Signals coming out AAU August 20th. Check that out.

ai. Um, and we'll be back tomorrow. Who knows what'll happen by then.

Only the shadow knows I guess. But we'll find out. Thanks everyone.

Have a great day. We're out.