Impact of New US-China Trade Deal on Rare Earth Minerals | TSG Ep. 870

We've got a new trade deal with China. Is it gonna make a difference to you? You're watching Textron game.

Hey everyone, welcome to Techstar gang. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend.

You know, the big news on Friday was, uh, that a, a trade deal. Well, the president of the US announced that he had a trade deal done with China. Lo and behold, the Chinese actually confirmed that there was some sort of deal done.

Um, we're going to get into the particulars of it. I know when I read it, it, I don't know. I, it was a little less than I was expecting.

But Mike, am I just, am I, am I unrealistic in my hopes? What, what's going on? Well, as is always the case with these things, the devil's in the details and we'll see how the details emerge and hopefully over the coming week.

But it would appear that, uh, China's not gonna try to hold its, uh, rare earth metals as hostage anymore. And we in turn are going to, uh, tone down the tariffs on the technology products, which is the part of this thing I think we care about most. But let's start with Stacy on this one.

'cause it's as much about the psychology of the deals and what it does to everybody's thinking as much as it is the actual, you know, how much am I gonna pay for X, Y, and Z? And I'd love to get your opinion. It seems to me that for the last six months, it's just been a lot of uncertainty.

And everybody who is uncertain winds up, you know, hoping for the best and planning for the worst. And then a lot of bad decisions get made. So what's your take on it?

What does this do? Is this just gonna take everybody's temperature down? Yeah, I, I think first off, people have to know what to believe.

And when things like this competence, there's a lot of misinformation, disinformation, is this something that's gonna go through? Will it fall through? And there's just been so much talk going on.

And then once it's determined, okay, yes, this is something I have to move through, there comes the question of what does this look like? Are we managing our supply? What are we, how does this, how are we gonna manage the tariffs?

What programs are we using? What's our, our platform for managing supply chain? And then in amidst that, when you think about cybersecurity, who's thinking about the risk?

And there's, there's research and data that says that, um, cyber terrorism, I mean, this, this is the kind of environment that can be rife for that, because it's a little bit chaotic. And companies are trying to figure out what does this mean for them? Does it mean something?

Is this really what's going to happen? Is this what it looks like? And then what's the process for going through that and going through that securely and responsibly?

And I think that it poses a lot of questions at any time. There's questions, doubt and uncertainty within a business environment, there's always ripples and effect that we all feel from that. So I think when the, when the news came out, I know for me personally, the first question was like, okay, is this real?

Are we really doing this? What's going on? And it was hard, you know, as I'm, as I'm reading the articles and I'm looking at this, I'm like, well, you know, what is my, what is the opinion?

What is the thought? If this is something that's real, what direction are we going in? So in this environment, which it's like getting this sort of news, one would be wondering, how are we gonna do this?

Then add it to this, the climate that we're in and everything. It's like, okay, what does this look like in reality for us? And then how do we do this securely and responsibly?

Lot of questions get asked. And again, with that doubt and uncertainty that can have ripples and effects for everybody. I don't think it matters much.

This is, I, I guess I don't really buy rare earth minerals personally, but I do want buy plastic things. I buy, um, clothing. And I don't think that this is gonna have much of an impact on the data they spend of most Americans.

Now that being said, it's great that the rare earth mineral, you know, export agreement is in place. We need it for our defense. I guess we need it for probably computers and phones, but for the most part, this, this is not gonna impact everybody.

You know, Americans going to target in Walmart. Yeah. So Mike, when, when I first saw the headline that we had a trade deal done with China, silly me, I thought we really had a trade deal done with China.

What we really, I mean, and I've read it now over across a half a dozen different sources. What it seems to me is this is nothing more than the Chinese have been kind enough to allow us to spend our money buying their rare earth minerals and keep us on the heroine that is our, our our, uh, dependency on China for these minerals. And sometimes you gotta pull the bandaid off and just go co you know, get, go cold Turkey to get the monkey off your back.

We, we need, we need alternative sources for these rare earth minerals. You know, I used to think when I first heard about the rare earth mineral thing that wow, China must be blessed that all these rare earth minerals happen to be in China. Well, no, they're not all in China.

But what China's done is they've gone out and, and financed and, and entered into agreements with countries and, and areas where rare earth minerals are, such as the, uh, the African Republic of Congo and, and so forth and Brazil and, and everywhere else where they basically have the monopoly to get the rare earth minerals where they are, bring them into China for processing, and then export them at a very high profits good business to Dukes like the US who are just going to, you know, stay on the heroin. And what did we give up for, for, you know, getting this right to continue spending a lot of money on rare earth minerals through China? Well, we, we've lowered our tariffs and opened up some techno forbidden technology that we weren't going to give them.

The tariffs are still very high and they're mutually high, right? Going back and forth. Our coming into the US is higher than going into China.

But really, what do we really want in a China, uh, a China trade pack? We want access to Chinese markets. They've got a billion and a half people.

We want to be able to sell our products in there. We want protection for our ip, right? With if things are gonna be made in China, we don't want to see knockoffs of it before it even gets across the ocean in the shipping container, right?

We want protections of our ip. Those are the things that I want in a China deal. This very much to me, sounded, is a, as a preamble deal, but it really doesn't get to the crux of what we need from a China trade policy.

Yeah. I'm trying to look up What chapter and art of the deal that this actually goes with, and it doesn't seem to line up at all. I I, There's a long term strategic aspect of it and a short term aspect of it, right?

And I think the, the, what we've given up, you're right Alan, and we've given up a lot for a short term gain. And the real question is, what's the US going to do in the long term? Uh, you know, the US itself is sitting on, um, millions of metric tons, uh, for earth minerals that we are not getting right now for a variety of both economic and political reasons.

And we've just discovered what is believed to be over a billion metric, tons of additional, uh, rare earth deposits throughout the country. And I think we're sort of now where we are with, um, fracking in oil, where if we invest the right amount of, um, know-how and uh, dollars we can get access to huge deposits that we didn't think exist anymore. That we didn't think exist, right?

And that could change the game. So it's a question of, you know, what do you do between now and opening up the US ability to manufacture, and how long does it take us to do that investment and get the know-how and start producing and become self-sufficient rather than relying on China? Well, you know, I'm a San Bernardino girl.

I was born, raised in San Bernardino, California, and we have the mountain pass mine, and most of what they pull out of that, uh, mountain pass mine goes to China for processing. It's one of the largest deposits of, of, of rare earth minerals in the world. And we send it to China for processing.

So I think Alan's onto something, it shouldn't be a Chinese trade deal. It should be a new way forward for processing these rare earth minerals, because we have them here. We're just not processing, I think China processes probably close to 80 or 90% of the, uh, of the rare earth minerals that we send over there.

So from a, you know, from a perspective, looking at the hood, I, we have the, in San Bernardino in that county, we have pushed for processing for a very long time. And I think Texas actually is start starting to, uh, I think the DOD put some money into, uh, some processing plants into in Texas to address this. You know, thi this is an old, this is a, an old from an old playbook, the British, this is what made Victoria great, right?

They would import raw materials from throughout the empire, from the US and Canada, north America, south America, Asia, Africa, and they would turn those raw materials into finished products, flax, uh, cloth or timber into ships and, you know, uh, steel and, and, and ironed and sold it at huge markups. And that's, that's what made the British Empire what it was. The word You're looking for is mercantilism.

Okay, Mercantil. If I'm a business owner, what I'm, I'm thinking is, I'm thinking, okay, there's this deal, there's the specifics of this deal, but what does this mean for, for China and US relations? And I think, Jack, you're saying like, there's the, the short term and then the long term, and is this the beginning of, of a better trade deal of other opportunities that we can then build upon?

Is this the start of something that we can agree on, or is this just kind of a one-off, uh, short-term solution to address a short-term issue or placate demands? Well, one, one of the things that Alan said was about intellectual property protection, right? And if, if China's taking raw materials and, uh, processing 'em, giving back essentially another form of raw materials, there's not a lot of intellectual property there, right?

We know how to do that as well. We're just choosing not to do it for a variety, right? Mostly economic and regulatory reasons.

Um, but if we manufacture other goods like chips or clothing or designs, those designs, that intellectual property is where we end up losing big time when the Chinese Communist Party considers doesn't have the concept of intellectual property, everything launched to the state, right? So if we bring those types of manufacturing back to the United States, which is what we're starting to do, we protect that intellectual property. And that's, I think, very good for the United States in the long run.

I also believe we should do the raw material processing here, but I think the intellectual property theft part of it is less risky. And I don't think there was anything in, in this agreement. In fact, this is only temporary, right?

It's only 90 days we have to read, we have to have a discussion again in 90 days in September. So we'll see what happens. This is the mo here of, of the administration, right?

They're, they're long on PR and short on substance. You know, we were supposed to have 90 deals in 90 days. We've got one with the uk, which is kinda like kissing your sister, um, or your cousin or whatever.

Um, you know, so, so they had to have another deal. So they're touting this as a deal. All right?

So in the next election cycle though, the phrase drill, baby drill will be replaced by mine, baby mine, right? Possibly. They've been saying that in California for a long Time.

Well, it's process, it's process baby, process Processing. That's What we've need already. We're mining, we're just not processing, right?

That, that's where the issue is. But, but let's also, that they also teased a huge, huge deal on the books, maybe with India. And then if everyone else doesn't line up, we're just going to send letters and put them in buckets.

I, something like that was the quote. And, um, you know, I taco, that's all taco. We'll see how this goes.

I don't know. I'm, I'm waiting to see what the EU does with China. 'cause it'll be interesting to see how all this plays out around the world.

'cause, you know, and there are other trade deals out there that can impact us. I keep in mind this does not impact most of, most, uh, American consumers. This is not gonna make things cheaper, Not directly, but I think there's that again, that misinformation, disinformation impact that in that way it affects people, the frustration, the tension.

Like, it's not as tangible as, okay, I'm pulling out my wallet doing it, but like, we're absorbing all of this negative energy. And even if we're looking at this and saying, okay, my business isn't impacted by, by minerals and whatnot, and you're still asking that question of like, what's gonna happen? Where are we gonna go with this?

And that's creating so much anxiety and risk because we don't know what's going on and we don't like sitting in uncertainty. That's not how we're built. Alright, well, we'll see what happens.

You know, this, of course, we recorded this on Friday. The whole thing may blow up by the time you're watching this on Monday. We'll, we'll, we'll see where, where it goes.

Let's take a break here on text John Gang. We're gonna come back and, uh, I'm gonna give a a report about where I, what I did on my summer vacation in New York City this week. You're watching Textron Gang, Discover Textron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation.

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Hey folks, we're back in. We're talking about platform engineering and specifically, there was an event in New York last week called Platform Con, New York City, I think, and I think there's also ones in other places around the world, but Alan went to the one in New York City and, you know, I don't know how many folks showed up there, Alan, but, um, give us a report, give your take on what's going on here because, you know, inquiring minds wanna know what the heck's going on with Platform engineering. Absolutely.

Well, I, I'll mention as, as I think it'll be in the bottom here. Um, we had a, I wrote a nice article on, on my experience at, at Platform Con, uh, New York in person. Now, Mike, what it is, is this is, I believe the third year for Platform Con.

And it went from, I think around 10,000 people to first year, 25,000 the second year to perhaps 40,000 people. Year three. Now that is, that is a virtual event.

So anyone can register and log in, and they have, I forget it was 80 sessions, a hundred sessions. It's been going on all week Monday. And it wraps up, uh, Friday, Friday morning, it wrapped up.

Um, what they did this year for the first time is they, they did some in-person. So sort of a hybrid event, if you will. Some in-person in London and New York.

The one here in New York was at the co convene, uh, convention or conference center that had about 400 people. It was sold out, they couldn't fit anymore. 400 people was a great, great turnout.

Um, some of these, well, all of the sessions here were then being live to the entire virtual event audience. The highlights of the sessions that Kelsey Hightower, you know, former Google, everybody I think in the cloud native space heard of Kelsey. Um, Kelsey's a real champion for platform engineering.

He, he keyed last year's event, keyed this year's event. Had some very interesting takes. You know, if I could sum it up though, he's bullish on platform engineering.

He thinks it solves a lot of what we've, what we've got wrong in our development and deployment, uh, scenarios and security as well. And it was interesting. His daughter actually was in the audience and she asked a question.

I didn't put this in the article, but his daughter was in the audience. She asked a question and it got Kelsey like, I guess right between the, you know, the eyes. It made him shed a tear or two.

There was a moment for him. So I was happy for Kelsey. Um, they had some other great speakers, though.

We had Google and it was interesting. They had a, a, a gal from Google who's in charge of the, the product of their internal development, a developer platform, their IDP 'cause everyone in Google. And they've been using an IDP for many, many years now that actually runs on Google Cloud, obviously, but Google Cloud runs on Google.

So it's a very, you know, incestuous relationship, if you will. But it was a great, great, uh, insight into how they Google is doing platform engineering and their IDPI also had a chance to speak to folks from ThoughtWorks, uh, grl, uh, a bunch of different companies, large and small. But the biggest thing was the enthusiasm of the participants.

This is a practitioner event. It was 400, you know, standing room only people there. They were, the conversations outside of the sessions were amazing.

org community rolled out certification classes now for platform engineering. It kind of reminded me of my DevOps Institute days. Those were, those courses were, were packed.

They had some great hands-on workshops for practitioners that were also packed. Um, lot of great communication. It, it was, look platform engineering's real, it's arrived.

They've got big companies, big and small, kind of, you know, touting it. And, uh, it was a great event. It was a great event.

I would imagine next year you're gonna see more in-person. They'll still be hybrid, but they may go to more cities and they may have bigger, London for one, I understand, was a bigger venue. It was not sold out as the New York one was close to sold out.

And also that same sort of vibe and energy. So I I, I'm bullish on platform engineering. I, Hey Alan, what was the, what did the demographics look like?

What was the age gr age groups? I felt old. Um, you know, so again, it, it was a, it was a practitioner event though.

There were plenty of execs there, uh, and managers and so forth. But I, I would say overall, it, it was, you know, twenties and 30 something with a, a sprinkling of 40 fifties and Morse. Yeah, well, I was at CD Con and I felt young Really well, and that, and that might say something right there, chase.

You know what? I know. That's why I asked the question.

And we were, you know, that's a, you know, it's, I thought that the group was, you know, represented, uh, DevOps 15 years ago and they're not changing much. Mm-hmm. So I think platform engineering is going to kind of sweep them off their feet.

Do you notice the types of attendees, whether they were from larger companies or smaller Companies? Both. That that's what, that's what got me both.

'cause you know, platform engineering is something that you really need when you're scaling, right, when you scale. And so it tends, tends to lend itself to larger organizations. Um, and there were, don't get me wrong, there were a lot of people from household name kind of companies, but there were also, you know, the usual startups and smaller companies that are, you know, staying on cutting edge of technology.

If you had to sum it up in like one sentence, what's your key takeaway from platform con? Platform platform engineering is real. And, and obviously people want to, uh, people wanna know that this is a real problem and they're looking for solutions and, and these platform engineering seems to be offering them the solutions they're looking for.

What, what type of topics were there? Did they have any topics on, uh, security? Yeah, they had some security.

Not enough. You know, in the article, in my predictions for next year's platform cut, I predicted that they'll have a whole track on, on security because it's too important not to, I guess, you know, one of the things that I'm still wrestling with is, you know, are we seeing jobs posted for platform engineers or, or is this something that software engineers or a subset of them do as a practice, per se? And it's a best practice, but it's not my job title.

No, no. There, so a platform engineer is an in-demand job title. And we've done stories on this, Mike, that on hold, they actually make more money than DevOps engineers.

But, um, here, here's an interesting thing. You know, I, I spoke to this woman, Camille Forer, who just wrote an O'Reilly book on platform engineering. And then I, I spoke to one or two other folks who have been around, you know, they weren't the young people at the show, let's put it that way.

They've been around and, and what they told me, they, they all said the same thing. They've been managing platforms for 20 plus years. I spoke to the SVP of a, of a company.

Um, I, darn if I remember the company's name, her name is Rii, uh, tell, tell something. Anyway, she had been at Yahoo and she's been at, uh, uh, HashiCorp and, and others. But, you know, all of those, all of those people, similar story, they've been managing platforms for 20 years.

We, as the, in the IT industry have had platforms all along. We just, you know, the, the idea of, you know, putting the name platform engineering on it and calling these people platform engineers, when, when you go underneath that umbrella, there's a lot of different, different disciplines that go into designing and managing, running that. I would say that we've had platforms, but not engineering.

'cause every platform's a snowflake in these operations, and they're all somewhat different and tweaked. And even multiple instances of Kubernetes are not the same. So that's kind of makes the whole issue difficult to scale.

Yeah. I mean, and that's why I think a part, a big part of what this community is, is trying to get like best practices in place. And, and you, interesting you mentioned Kubernetes.

I think another thing that I heard there yesterday is the platform engineering is maturing. It used to be, all right, let's install Kubernetes. Okay, we've got our platform move on.

But you know, now we're looking at IDPs, we're looking at security, you know, looking at a lot of other things that go beyond just setting up and installing Kubernetes. Yeah. Alan, what's for, for the neophytes and who are not platform engineers?

What's IDP Internal developer? Internal developer platform. So, you know, they, a, Google creates an IDP for all the Google developers to use.

So I'm, I'm kind of smiling to myself that Kelsey Hightower keynote of this thing. 'cause I cannot tell you how many keynotes I've been to over the years with Kelsey. And he is always standing up there saying, Kubernetes is easy.

And everybody in the room goes, what's that guy talking about Kubernetes nuts? 0 where we're gonna finally get it right and call it platform engineering. Make it easier.

You mean It goes beyond FPI goes to the zoo. We, we'll see, we will see what happens. But Kelsey's, Kelsey's definitely bullish on it.

So anyway, that's my report. All right, folks. Well, any final parting phrases, thoughts on this, Alan, before we move on to our Next step?

No, I mean, you know, we will have, in addition to that article I wrote, we did a whole bunch of videos, though. They streamed live from the show yesterday. And, uh, actually by today, they'll probably be up on Textron TV or or OTT app.

com, because that's where we're gonna be, you know, putting more and more of this platform engineering centric news. And, and, And there wasn't any big announcements when any, you know, was there any, any interesting tooling announced, Or it's not, it's not that kind of plat, it's not that kind of conference, right? It's not a single vendor.

It's really not. It's a community led kind of thing. And it, it hasn't matured to the point, let's say a cube con where all these companies, you know, release their latest versions for Cube Con or something like that.

It's still very much more of defining best practices community. It, it reminds me of early DevOps, like DevOps days when that was really rocking. It's group therapy, right?

Yeah. There is a certain amount of that. Anyway, let's take a break.

We'll come back. We've got, uh, our third, third segment lined up. com is the leading resource for news analysis and education on challenges facing the cybersecurity industry.

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And under the heading of Curiouser and Curiouser, the US House of Representatives has banned the usage of WhatsApp. Not quite clear why, but they're saying apparently there's not enough transparency in how WhatsApp works or what's going on. This is from the same people who seem to be using, you know, signal left, right and center, but it's a little perplexing at the very least.

But Jack, what's your take on what's going on here? Well, I'm gonna steal a line from Stacy and say this is, uh, a little bit of, uh, misinformation, disinformation, and head scratching all at once. Um, what I understand is they're claiming that there are data security issues and it was banned by the House Chief Information Officer.

So let's just start with good thing that the house has a CIO role, I don't think anybody knew existed. Um, that they're considering the security aspects of the tools they're using is absolutely wonderful. Makes my heart go pitter patter.

Uh, but, um, there are a number of tools that are available that they can use for communication that spans signal. Um, Microsoft Teams, um, uh, even Amazon has a tool, again, another one I didn't know Wicker, um, that is on the approved list. All of the tools that are approved, uh, and, um, WhatsApp all support, end-to-end encryption.

So that's a really good security feature. Uh, apparently WhatsApp, by default does not encrypt the data once it lands on your device. And that is an option that you have to enable.

So that may be the sticking point. It's not clear. All of the other tools, um, encrypt the data as it lands on your device.

So when it's at rest, it's still encrypted and you have to authenticate to the device before you can get access to that, uh, data. The other part that may come into play here is that, um, there is a way to share, uh, to link your WhatsApp stuff with the rest of your meta applications, Facebook, Instagram, some of the others. And that may be part of, it's not clear if that's the issue or not, but that may be part of the sticking point, that by connecting those apps to your Facebook app, there's some leakage in that can occur there, as well as Facebook and, uh, or Meta Now, um, plans on and has released its first ads and is putting ads into the WhatsApp platform.

So all of that may come to Bite Meta in the long run and WhatsApp in the long run in terms of its usage. So Stacy is in your sense that this is something other enterprises should be looking at and say, Hey, if the CIO of the House of Representatives has an issue, maybe we should all have an issue? Possibly.

I mean, again, it gets into everything is just so chaotic. How does anybody know what to believe? Sometimes I feel it's, it's like that, I forget what movie it is, but that scene, you know, a bunch of movies where it's seen, it's like, Hey, look over there.

You know, something gets taken from your plate. Like, I can't tell. And you know, I mean, it's interesting that they're, they're t even looking at this WhatsApp when meanwhile everything that's been going on with Signal, is it a decoy?

Like what is going on? Right? These are all the questions that people are asking and trying to figure out.

So I think it, it, regardless it's important for all, uh, organizations to be looking at, you know, what programs are being used, what's going on with the data. You know, I think about how last week we were talking about, um, the EU and their high, uh, standards and expectations for how data is managed, right? And that the fact that they, they're uncomfortable with the US managing their data.

So we're, I almost feel like there's a little bit of a parallel, we're looking at this, it's not another country, but we're saying, okay, meta, we're not comfortable with you having the data, so what are we doing? And that, that's a big question that I think every organization may be asking or, or if they're listening and watching would be asking and trying to look at their policies and trying to look at what makes sense and to try and, and keep up as best that they can. But again, I think we need to see where we land, where are we next week and the week after, and to just try and keep on top and keep, uh, as informed as possible about what's going on.

Because there is a lot that's going on and there's a lot of things that are changing and moving very quickly. Well, it's interesting that you bring up the uk um, because the UK in the past has flirted with, sorry, the EU in the past has flirted with this. And the UK is currently contemplating requiring people to break encryption to provide a backdoor for the government.

And so anything that's end-to-end encrypted where the service provider doesn't have access to the encryption keys would not be legal in the uk. And eventually the us the, the EU has mentioned that they'd like to go that way various times in the past. So that would mean all of these apps wouldn't be valid in, uh, those, those regions.

And it's sort of, there's this schizophrenic or bimodal view of security, which is we want no sharing of personal data unless the government gets access to it. Right. And, um, I, I am, I guess I'm glad that the United States hasn't gone that far and that the, the, the House isn't saying, oh, well we don't have access to the encryption keys, therefore it's not good.

They're actually saying it's not secure enough rather than it's too secure. Uh, and I wonder how much of this has to do with, uh, uh, tracking this information through the National Archives. 'cause my understanding with these apps, uh, an individual would have to, uh, archive it for them.

It's not something that's done automatically that, so that seems to be a, it, I, I don't know the space at all, but to me that seems to be a, a gap in these types of tools, unlike email servers, right? Exactly. I I wasn't gonna go there, Mike, but I will say that, uh, both WhatsApp and Signal support time limited messages, so they disappear after a certain amount of time.

Um, Microsoft Teams, which is on the approved list, would presumably, and I'm, again, I'm not an expert in that space, but I assume that since it's part of the whole Microsoft Mecca system would actually be able to archive the messages, uh, in a secure fashion. Um, I don't know about ER or some of the others, but you're, I think, Tracy, that the, the disappearing aspect of messages is concerning for things that are conducted on government business. You do wanna retain that.

Yeah. So, and, and there are Rules for how long those things should be retained. You know, I, I've always thought that the, the, the, uh, connection between Instagram and Facebook created potential security issues.

'cause you, you can't, like, it's very hard to stop if I post it on one. Does it show up on the other? I thought they kept WhatsApp purposely sort of isolated from the Facebook infrastructure and all of that for the very reason you brought up Jack or the very reason that the, the, uh, CIO brought up, Right?

Well, it's, it's, my understanding is that by default, it's not integrated. So if you create, like, if you create an Instagram account, essentially it's part of Facebook. If you create, uh, whatever their, um, I can't remember what they call it, right?

They competitor Twitter threads. Thank you. They competitor Twitter threads, if you create a Threads account, it's automatically integrated with your Facebook and your Instagram.

WhatsApp is kept separate, but it is either, is still a way to connect it. And I think people do, because there's, you know, from a being part of a greater platform and having all your things talk to each other, I think a lot of people find it useful to connect them all together. I mean, if that's the case, you know, I valid concerns.

I, I wish they'd be a little bit more consistent, you know, across them all. But valid concerns. Well, it, It'd also be nice if they got more specific in what the, the lack of transfer, you know, their statement was there's a lack of transparency in the security.

And I'd like to understand, you know, what they mean by that. What is their, what is the actual concerns from the CIO and you know, is there an opportunity for Meta to fix the, to address those concerns and get back in? Or are they basically just saying, that's it, you're out?

Uh, well, you know, I, I have a, you know, when I think about they're using Signal, but they're not using WhatsApp, so why? Right. And I believe that WhatsApp collects a lot of metadata because I think, um, I think that they want, you know, meta wants that, uh, but I don't think Signal collects that much.

So it almost feels, to me it would be the opposite. You know, WhatsApp's gonna say who you messaged, where you message, and I think you can archive that data off, but Signal, I don't think Signal collects, uh, much of anything. And is that, is that the issue here?

They don't want that kind of information, uh, traced anymore. That's why I was asking about the National Archives, because it seems to me it's the opposite. It seems to me WhatsApp would be easier to archive than Signal.

Well, it, it, it could be the metadata and it could also be the, the, the potential to abuse the metadata or whatever ad data they do have access to for profit or for, right. That through throughout the Meta Universe. Whereas if you're on Signal or if you're part of, uh, uh, you know, all of the office, the, the Microsoft teams is part of Office 365.

It's part of FedRAMP. So all of that is, is in a walled garden. It doesn't get shared.

A signal is obviously signals like a nonprofit. It doesn't share with anybody. It's not trying to make money off of this stuff.

I don't know the answer for Wicker, uh, Amazon's tool and the other ones that are approved is, uh, Apple's, uh, iMessage and FaceTime. But those are also essentially walled gardens. Apple doesn't share that information with anybody else.

Doesn't sell it either. It's really only Facebook that's ever been in the position of saying, well, you give us access to, you know, we basically will take everything we can and leverage it and use it to sell ads against you and to do other things with it, Right? So I feel like that's kind of the core of the problem here for, uh, WhatsApp, right?

Because they're providing a quite a bit of detail about all those government officials and Facebook owns it. I guess, you know what I wanna know, it's like how much potential shadow it is going on in Congress and the government in general, whether you, you know, they have these quote unquote approved apps, but I got a feeling that a lot of them are probably communicating on things that are not quote unquote approved. And oh, But that's not new.

I mean, Mike, you, you brought up Hillary's emails, that's the perfect example. But it wasn't just Hillary. They've all, you know, what about cell phones?

What about your cell phones? Are they using, you know, lockdown cell phones? Are they using burner phones?

Are they, you know, there's all kinds of craziness going on. So, so Let's also be clear here that the ban was on government issued devices. Right now, almost all of the members of the house and their staff are gonna have a government issued device for government work and then a personal device for their personal stuff.

And will they use the personal device for government work? Even if by accident, which I'm sure anybody who's ever been issued multiple devices, a business device and a personal device has almost always used the wrong device because it's, it's just a pain in the ass, right? It's a pain in the, took us to deal with that.

So yeah, inadvertently you're gonna end up using Shadow it, you know, personal device to do government business. Do some people do it purposefully? I'm sure It is what it is.

Well, It feels like, to me, this is a, a, a discussion about the government's lag in terms of adopting new technology and adjusting to how we now communicate. Um, and maybe the government should have their own version of a signal where we can track, uh, you know, the, the data that's coming from them so we, the National Archives can have a look at it or at least, you know, track it. It's, and that's what they're there for.

And we don't, we're not doing that with these new, um, solutions. And everybody has a phone and everybody's gonna use their own phone. Uh, it's just the way we are.

So how do we, how does government catch up with that? Well, We Have a long way to go. There's always a lag between technology and then ledges, legislative legislature, uh, and, and like society catching up to it.

And, you know, and, and the government at some level, we think we hold to a higher standard because they need to have, you know, the, the, the security, I don't want to use the word secrecy, but it, there's definitely a lag and, and technology's moving forward. It's such a rapid pace, you know? Well, in, In this case, I don't really think there's a lag.

If you think about it, they've given the house members options for seven or eight different communications channels now, you know, in the technology world, we talk very often about, you know, meeting the customers where they are. And I believe that, and I've got, I don't know how many different communications channels I use on a daily basis simultaneously having communicated right, with Slack and Teams and Signal and WhatsApp and email and, and, and, and, and it goes on. And you know, it's because I can't dictate to the people I interact with what tools they use, right?

And if you're a House member and your constituency or somebody very important reaches out to you on a particular communications channel, do you tell 'em, no, I can't talk to you on this. You must talk to me on some other channel. Or do you have the conversation you need to have?

If it's a top secret, you tell them it has to be done on another channel. Thank you very much. Yes.

Well, from Top Secret, Yes, yes. That's what you do for classified stuff. I mean, that's a whole nother story, but the house, most house members aren't dealing with classified stuff on their day-to-day basis.

Right? They're dealing with just generic issues that, that, for the most part end up in the public, because that's their job, is to be in the public. I, I think that now that we know that there's an actual CIO for the house, and I'm assuming there's one for the Senate, maybe somebody should invite these folks they're hearing and ask some interesting questions.

I would love that. That'd be great. Let's do it.

I would love that too. Great. Great suggestion, Mike.

Absolutely. Alright, on that note, let's wrap up this episode of Text on gang Tracy. Stacy, Jack, Mike, thank you for joining.

Thank you for watching. As usual, we have our Textron TV schedule right behind this. Uh, we'll be back tomorrow with fresh content.

Um, until then, take care, everybody. We're out.