Navigating Corporate Challenges: Intel, Cybersecurity, & AI | TSG Ep. 899
Transcript
Hey everyone. I've got my tar and feathers ready. You're watching Textron Gang.
Hi everyone, it's Alan Shiel. I'm still in Vegas and it's still hot, but you're watching Textron Gang. We, of course, record Textron Gang Day, usually business day before.
So it's Friday, though. You're your Monday. I hope you've had a great weekend.
Uh, it's a gonna be a busy week ahead. We've got a lot of news to go over with you today, including the, the tar and feathering of the Intel CEO. It appears, uh, as well as a report from Black Hat and you AI really saving us money in this DevOps space.
We'll talk about all those things. Let me introduce you to a great panel. We've got to discuss 'em with, first of all, just back from picking up her birthday present.
We're not gonna tell you what it is, it's a surprise. Tracy Reagan, Mitch Ashley, Jack Poller, and of course, the dean, Mike Ard. Hey, gang, how are you today?
Great and great. Good, good. Glad to be here.
You know, for, for our audience out there, I hope you caught the last two days of last week's, uh, Textron gang. 'cause there were special, uh, gang episodes that we did hear out in Vegas. Rather than having the usual gang, I, I actually spoke to people at, at booths and stuff in Vegas.
If you didn't catch them, they're available on the YouTube TV channel, uh, Textron tv, YouTube textron tv or Textron tv, or at Textron tv TT channel. But we're here about Monday though, Mike. It's a busy Monday.
Kick it off. Yeah, I don't know. I've never seen anything quite like this, but the president of the United States is reaching out to share his opinion about who should be the CEO of Intel, And well, it's, And Go ahead.
And, you know, that has something to do with the whole tariff fight. And then there's an argument about whether or not Intel wants to be in the foundry business. And there's all kinds of backstory going on here.
But, um, Alan, let's start with you on this thing. I mean, it does seem, shall we say, um, a little surprisingly disjointed and maybe intrusive. So, Mike, I have in my hand here a paper, right?
Anybody remember those lines? Anybody remember? We're not old enough to remember those words.
No. Joe McCarthy, But that's Joe McCarthy. He never showed what was in the paper, but he had in his hand here a paper.
And in that paper in his hand, people's careers were, were, were blotted out. People's lives were ruined until someone finally stood up and said, have you no decency, sir. Mm-hmm.
Have you no decency. This, this president didn't a, a pin, a opine that Intel CEO should resign. He demanded it by, by Royal Fiat.
We fought a war in this country not to be ruled by kings who get to tell us that, right? This is a private company. What goes on between their board?
And we could discuss what their board and this CEO says. But what we've got here is Senator Tom Cotton, who's gone off on haywire trips before, says he believes, or it's come to his attention, or he has a paper in his hand that the Intel CEO has some connections to the Chinese Communist Party. Some companies he did business with or connected to the CPP or the CCP.
Excuse me. Look, if you've ever done business in China, you've done business with the Chinese Communist Party. They control the whole lock, stock and barrel.
When I was running, when we had DevOps Institute, we had a very big partner in China, very nice people. They came here to Boca Raton. I hung out with them.
I went to China three times and met with them. And then I realized why a 36-year-old man there, less than that, maybe 32, was running such a big operation. And then one day, one of his people told me his colonel was big in the party.
That's how stuff gets done in China. We could not do business in China because it happens like that, but to, to make these allegations. And we, we didn't even give the guy a chance to defend himself.
It may very well be that innocent, but to make these allegations. And then immediately before the ink is dry on, on the paper in his hand, if there's any ink on that paper, have the president demand that this guy resign right now, thank you for your attention to this matter. I'm not ready to put on my ground and march in lockstep just yet.
That's not America. That's not what we do here. We don't run the guy outta town tar and feathered on a rail.
On top of that, it's not just about, and I don't even remember the CEO's name now, yang Gaan or whatever. It's about Intel itself. This is the only American company making chips here.
They're in a delicate phase where we, they're literally teetering, teetering on life or death. And this is just the, this is like pushing someone off the cliff or someone's extending a hand to get pulled out of the water and you turn your back on them. Worse than that, turn the hose on them, right?
This is, it's, it's, it's bad business on top of everything else. The other thing, and I mentioned it in the article I wrote, as much as it pains me to say this, if this guy's name was Smith or Jones and he looked like us on here, I don't know if we'd be so quick to judgment, to rush, to judgment that he has a connection to the ccp. It's a lot easier.
This is like, you know, the old movies they used to show the Japanese on World War ii, right? The old, you know, they had that very sort of Japanese kind of sneaky look, if you will. And, um, it's, yeah, it's just un-American.
That's all I got to say on it. Well, the guy's only been CEO since March. The just, the board just appointed this guy.
Um, so I think, I think the way to resolve this, Alan, is, uh, lip through tan needs to get a glass t something and with a 24 karat gold base and take it to Washington and present it to Trump. And, you know, I like the Apple guy did just Like, exactly, by the way, I think that's like the only saying that a lawyer said, 'cause it's actually Joseph Welsch or somebody like that that said that at the McCarthy hearing. Uh, sir, you, you have no decency, sir.
Oh, the only, the other one I remember is you issued the code red, but that was Tom Cruise in a movie. So other than that, I don't know, don't remember any lawyers saying, but Well, you know, when McCarthy was around, we still had a democracy. And I know we don't wanna admit to it, but we are full on in an authoritarian government.
And Trump has made himself the boss. That is how it is right now. And we, you know, we can try to say that that's not real, because it's easier to say it's not real than to acknowledge it, but it's real.
It's, we're here. We, he has taken over every branch of the government, including, um, the judicial branch. So, which means we are in full on authoritarian mode.
Um, the sad part about, uh, Mr. Tan is that, as Mitch pointed out, he is only been in charge for the last four months. And if you look at the entire population of CEOs that could take and tell in the correct direction, he would be the only person.
And I am certain that he is doing the best that he can to pull this company together and to, to turn the ship. And we need intel. This is not impacting just Mr.
Tan. It impacts thousands of employees of Intel. And it, it impacts chip manufacturing across the board.
It's a very serious problem, um, right now for, for the United States to have this kind of conversation going on with Intel in particular. So this is, this is scary stuff. This is real.
Um, and I am quite certain that if we checked on Elon Musk, that he would have plenty of contacts in the Chinese government and the Communist Chinese party as well as anybody else that's in high, uh, in a high ranking role in, uh, in, in any of these industries. So we have to, we have to check ourselves and we have to ask the question, how much does fascism cost the American people? It's going to be a lot.
We are going to pay a lot for fascism, and we're starting to feel it now. Okay, look, I'm, I'm, I appreciate the, uh, emotion and the, the drama and I think, you know, it's fashionable and it's, uh, there's a lot of people who can hate on Trump for a lot of different reasons. But this is not a new issue with lip Bhutan.
And to pretend that it is, is ignoring what's really going on here. So this was sparked by the fact that cadence where Lip Bhutan was CEO from 2009 to 2021, pleaded guilty to selling and giving, uh, intellectual property and cadence design software to design AI chips and other chips to the Chinese government, to the Chinese military, and to companies that are owned by the Chinese government and military for which they plead guilty and are paying $140 million. Fine.
So let's not pretend that this is, because That's old news, Jack. That's old news that was in there. And they made him the CEO anyway, so the obviously decided it wasn't an issue.
The point is that this is not about the fact that he has contacts in China. He has a 30 year history of investing in companies in partnership with the, the People's Republic Party. Don't you think the time to, to talk about that was before you made him CEO?
Well, and the time, I guess I do. Which is what? Wait, wait, wait.
You, I gave you guys plenty, Alan, I gave You guys plenty of the United States who stole billions of dollars in Medicare fraud. Alan, I gave you guys Plenty of time to talks here. I think it's fair to say to Intel, are you guys very sure that you wanna get in bed with a guy to run the company who has spent 30 years investing in the Chinese commun party?
The time to say that was in March, not August, not This is a private company. It's the board that gets to make this decision, decides It's until the, Let's be clear, let's be really clear, because you merely mouthing this. They didn't say to until, are you sure you want this guy as the CEO?
That's not what President Trump wrote. No, he said he could be Fired. He said he has to resign right now.
'cause I'm the boss here. Yes, that's what he said. And that's not American.
And if you, if you could swallow and let's let, let's Be clear something here. If he was a fascist and we were in a fascist government, he wouldn't say you should fire him. He would actually take him out and shoot him, or take him out and arrest him causing died.
Jack, should we wait yet? Or should I wait till I wear a yellow star and I gotta, oh, Come on, Alan's, This is On you and I are same here. This is Not, he did as good as shooting him, Jack, because he knew when he made that announcement until stock would tank, and that's as good as shooting him.
You, you're an apologist. I am not an apologist. I'm a realist that says you cannot claim that this is a new issue that Trump did this willy-nilly, that Tom Cotton is doing this willy-nilly.
The man has a very long history of dealing with trying, and it spite Well appointed him. And as Tracy pointed out, Intel is critical to the United States security. And it is valid as the President of the United States to say, I don't want somebody who is in bed with the potential enemy of the United States to be running a critical chip company for the United States.
That is a valid concern of the President to say if as Tracy says, the company is so important to the country, which I believe it is. Okay, now, I'm not saying he did or didn't do this. I am saying he has a very long history of not, not just associating with the people, but he was one of the very early investors in Esic.
He was responsible for Esic becoming as big as they are and being as competitive as they are with Intel. Right? And 40 or 50 other companies that we, that I know about, that he invested in, that are owned by the Chinese Communist Party that are in bed with Chinese Communist Party, I think it is reasonable.
Now, Trump may have done this in a ham-handed way, but I think it is being very naive to say we should ignore that because Intel board decided we should ignore that as an investor and a stockholder and intel, which I am, I have my own concerns, and I think it is fair for the country to say that somebody who has these types of ties to the Chinese Communist Party may not be the right guy to run critical infrastructure semiconductor stuff. But Jack, should we bring him in to run the do, because I'm sure Elon Musk has a lot of, a lot of facts too. Alright, so it's a timeout, timeout.
So it is clear that there's no real form of due process being applied here. And so we're essentially having a jury point, we we're having a jury one deciding the trial to put a trial together on somebody and indict them in a public format. And there isn't any formal investigation to go with that.
There may very well be issues here that are worth investigating, but this is not the way to do it by certain and not the way you do it in a democratic society. Second thing, and I'm gonna step away from Trump for a minute, but am I the only one who thinks maybe the board at Intel is just flat out dysfunctional at this point? Because it sort of seems that way?
That's What I'm wondering. There are factions on the Intel board, right? It, it led, it's why Pat Gelsinger left there.
There is a genuine discussion over whether Intel should go into the found foundry business making chips for third party customers versus just making their own chips, right? That, that was, that was the reason Gelsinger left. Mm-hmm.
And, and this guy came in, I, I remember when he was appointed, they said he wasn't as big a fan of the Foundry business. And I'm sure there's a faction of the board that still wants to do that or not want to do that. But Mike, you hit the nail on the head Jack.
These are allegations. These are, these are issues that need to be aired out. You don't shoot first and then ready, aim, and that's what's going on here.
They're shooting. Well, I will, I will, I will, I will simply point out that the shoe has been on the other foot and the other side has done plenty of shoot, aim ready? Who, who's the other side?
Oh, Look at Elon Musk. There's plenty of politicians who've called for and accused Elon Musk of the most heinous of heinous crimes while they were in office, right? With the same detrimental effect to Tesla and other Elon Musk stock.
So let's not pretend that this is only one side. I don't I agree with you. It's not Wait, wait, wait.
Jack, let me, are you trying to return, turn this into a Republican Democrat? No, I am not. I am simply saying that your histrionics, while I understand them, are not exactly fair.
We don't ar we don't operate in a vacuum. Okay. Politicians For Jack, lemme lemme tell you how we do operate.
We are a nation and I guess of laws Politic death. And I Wanna point out, lemme politic all person, I wa listen, I would like to point out that Mr to himself had no charges filed against him personally. Okay?
No, no. It's a whole other question about whether or not CEO accountability is a whole nother topic. We can go into name the last CEO possibly that has been charged for the crimes of the company they have.
Right? But politicians continuously demagogue and demonize their political and economic opponents and for what they believe is right. And I don't think it is fair to say that we live in a fascist society, or that this is Trump being a dictator.
If Trump was a fascist and a dictator, the he would not be saying, I think the guy should be gone. He would be making him gone, and we would not be able to Have making him gone. That's the point.
He said, the guy has to resign now. And what can something, what happen? Nothing.
Joe Stalin didn't shoot people immediately. First they had a show trial. Yes.
Right? We don't even have a show trial here. He just, he, he, you don't think he knew by putting that statement out that Intel's stock is going to take a hit?
Are you that naive? I think he knew exactly that Intel stop, take a hit. So What he did is as good as shooting them.
Jack and Alan, if you're gonna take that view, you have to take that view about all politicians. You'll find About, I do take that view about all politicians. I do.
All right, we're At a place though, as Jack, this is, this is not normal. Now there's a difference, there's a difference between all politicians and the guy who sits behind the desk at the Oval Office. There's a difference.
Let's not, let's not try to make all politicians, Let's, let's, let's give Tracy the last word here, because basically it is not normal. So Tracy, finish the thought. I, this is just not normal and we can't normalize it.
We really can't. And e every little misstep has to be, uh, everybody has to speak out about these missteps. If we wanna call them that Jack, that he should have not have maybe said it out loud.
He should have gone to them and spoke to them, is what we, I think is what we're trying to say. Do process manage. Well, you're investigation, do process is We, we have process for this.
Okay? And to make that kind of a statement against a company, I can tell an impact more than just the CEO is so, it, it's just stupid and irresponsible. And You're aware that we've been in Happening behind the scenes, Right?
What ha what could be happening behind the scenes is a different story, right? They could be, they could have been having boardroom discussions with these people and the board and sending somebody other than the president to speak out. This is not normal.
This it's not, nor we have process in place for these kinds of things. And there was Congressional 2023 about this. 2 billion co-invested with the Chinese Communist Party over 20 some odd years.
And you know what so did kind of Perkins. And so yes, there Were three other, there were three other, there were, sorry, there were four other VC firms identified, including Sequoia, right? And Sequoia, right?
They've all right, and they've all changed their name of their Chinese investment arms Or whatever. So it was not, it, it's not criminal for VC firms to invest in Chinese firms, all of which, all of which, including some of the best names, you know, have close ties to the Communist party there, because that's the way the Chinese economy works. But If, and if the department, if the Department of Justice feels that there's a problem, they should open a case and they should investigate him.
And the board has to be dealing with that. It should not be a public discussion. Not in this way.
When You start short circuiting the law and the due process procedures, that's when you cross into fa I'm sorry, and next, and, and where does it stop? Because next week it'll be who? Broadcom and Nvidia, and it'll just go out.
It'll spin. Oh, I'm sure Broadcom's on the list, no doubt. Mm-hmm.
Yep. Anyway, hey, we gotta take a break. Let's, let's take it down a notch.
We'll come back and talk about something silly like DevOps. 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.
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It could be highly debated as well. But GitLab has a report out, they hired the Harris Poll organizations to go talk to a bunch of CEOs and ask them, well, are you actually seeing a return on your AI investments for software development? And, you know, they are apparently starting to see a lot of progress.
Productivity for developers is up 48%. Some folks are saying they're saving as much as 28,000. And more importantly, the CEOs seem to be firmly convinced that investments in software development are good for the business, driving value for the business.
And Mitch, I know you looked at this report, but I'm just wondering, you know, are we on the cusp of some sort of AI driven software? DevOps, engineering Renaissance? It, it, it is happening as we speak.
I mean, it is transforming, right? Right before our eyes when we think of it as code completion and some basic steps like that. But when you talk to people that are using AI tools, whether it's kind of going down the, the vibe, coding angle, or more using AI as part of the development process, not just for coding and automating steps, it, it, it was, it was a significant number.
I mean, they talked to 20, over 2,700 C-level executives in this study. And, uh, that what you mentioned at the end there was, the thing I took most note of is, uh, it was like 82% said that they're increasing or their, they would take half their IT budget and invest it in software innovation around ai. Something to that effect.
Uh, it was very substantial. Uh, my numbers from our studies aren't quite that high, but it definitely, there's a ramp up and increase in AI for development processes. So it's, it, it's bringing to light.
There are real benefits here. There are real productivity gains. And, you know, if you want to get on the, the an, I'm not in the protagonist seat like Jack, so don't attack me on this one, but Jack, um, is, if you wanna get on the productivity bandwagon of ai, I think there's a lot to be set for what's going on here.
And, you know, GitLab was the sponsor of this, but I think a lot of vendors can make hay with these numbers and kind of do their own thing as well. There's, there's some substantial benefits here, and we're, and we're seeing it in our work directly at the Futurum group. Tracy, you seeing any of this?
What's the, what's your reaction? Blah, blah. I knew I shouldn't have gone.
No, I think we could take that article and put, uh, a date on it, like 2019 and change the ti the title or the, the term of the technology that we're using. And all those numbers would be exactly the same. I don't really see a whole big difference yet.
I mean, sure. We're, you know, I'm using AI to fix code. I, um, especially markdown, uh, I have to do a lot of work around it.
It saves me time. So, but every time we go through a, some kind of a evolution in computer science, it saves me time. This has been, this is who we are.
This has been, been what we've been doing for the last 40 years as we've been saving time and making things easier. Is AI that big of a leap is cool? I mean, some of the stuff that I use it for, I'm really happy about, um, just as happy as I was when I wrote my first query on DB two.
So, um, you know, these articles, I think that a lot of it's, uh, you know, these studies and whatnot, I think they're, I, I take 'em with a grain of salt. But that being said, we, AI is in a position, especially agents, which, you know, everybody knows how much I love agents because they're hard to manage, uh, to change DevOps and platform engineering. It has the, the, the structure and the bones for it.
But we have such a long way to go. And the more I read these articles, the more frustrated I get because I see hallucinations all the time, and I want them fixed. Please just fix them.
We really do need to be thinking about how we can make the technology work well for us. I mean, I, I can see it in my code. It's like, that is not, that is so wrong.
I can read it and know that it's wrong. So we have a long way to go. I can't believe it's helping that much, but it we're, it's in a position to make us, um, better DevOps engineers yet Tra Tracy not yet.
Part of the problem is it, it's a headlines problem. It's the 750 billion, it's the 28,000, it's that kind of thing. And all those real numbers, yeah, maybe they are, maybe they aren't.
Um, to me, what I looked beyond it, beyond that, and yes, they're planning on increasing their software investment, but there's some other key things said, which for example, I'm telling vendors is we have to, we have got to generate secure code, not fix secure code after it's been generated. Because if you believe any kind of the multiples of, of how much code we will be generating over the next 6, 12, 24, 36 months as that increases, anything that's a manual process can't scale because you can't have that much time allocated to fixing, scanning and fixing vulnerabilities and code that's been generated, scanning and fixing or addressing hallucinations. To your point, Tracy, those issues have to be able to address, to be addressed in order for it actually to kind of deliver the promise at scale of what AI can do.
So I think there's some vendors that need to step up around software security and really address it so that it's done upfront. It doesn't require extra work, extra steps in human power to address it. Yeah.
And in areas that we could really benefit from, like, um, we talked about backstage being so popular Backstage is Backstage is a scaffolding for putting together your pipelines and your workflows. If that, if Backstage is still getting that much popularity and is being used in that many places, it means we're not using AI to do a lot of this work. And that's the kind of efforts that we need.
That's, that's the kind of work that AI could be doing. Um, not that I wanna see backstage replaced, but I'm just saying Backstage is a good example of how we're not using AI to build DevOps platform DevOps workflows and platform engineering workflows. Alan, there's some, there's some confirmation bias in this, I would argue, and I'd love to get your opinion about it.
So, so C levels, you know, are heavily invested in AI and think that, you know, this is the greatest. And did they know Slice? I mean, they, this is what they're reporting up to them.
And you know, look, who did this report, Harris? Do they have ties to the CCP? No, they don't.
I, I don't know. In all honesty. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Before we get sued, Harris does not have ties to the ccb we know of, We know of Exactly. But I have here should Be looked into. It should be looked into.
When you, when you think of companies surveying tech people on tech subjects, tech subjects, Harris isn't the top of mind. They, I'd expect them more to see a political survey, frankly, in Harris. Right?
So, and the other thing is, look, didn't we just have a show two or three weeks ago, there were another survey that came out that said developers are actually 19% slower when using AI to develop it's 19% productivity hit. Who do I believe? I I I don't know who, I believe the, the surveys sponsored by a tech vendor who's pushing a, This Is you, you've come to the core issue though, right?
There is a massive disconnect between what the C level thinks they're seeing and what they rank and file is seeing. Absolutely. I Well, I was gonna say tra look, Tracy, Tracy stole my thunder.
She was just off a couple of decades. All right. Back in, you know, back in what of the, the, the youngins today, call it the, the, you know, the tail end of the last century, right?
In the, the early 1990s, I spent two years at Novell trying to convince the architects of NetWare that writing an entire operating system in X 86 assembly was really kind of bad idea. And that we really needed to move it to a modern, that at the time, modern language called C. Right?
Right. And I learned, talked to them and, you know, train them how to write portable C and all of this stuff. And they looked at me after all this time and said, that's all great, but there's no way in hell a compiler will ever write, create assembly code that runs faster than we can.
Right? And they can't generate code faster. They can't do this, they can't do that, right?
As Tracy said, we have been doing this for years and years and years of software development tools that enable us to get faster, to produce more code that allows us to focus on feature functionality. And as Mitch said, security rather than on actually writing code, writing code is the easiest part of the job. The hardest part is figuring out how to make the code, do what you want it to do correctly and securely.
And the more time, the more ability we can get developers to focus on understanding their problem they're solving and figuring out the algorithms to create that, to solve that problem and do it securely, the better we are than taking them away from the mechanical road effort of translating their thought into code that's better for us overall. Here's the danger. This study.
Go ahead. Here's the danger in this kind of study too, is it's real. You know, you can take numbers and use of however you want, right?
You can make a spreadsheet, say whatever you want, but these kind of numbers could easily be taken by C level or any kind of executive and say, oh, good, well then that means we need half the number of people, half the num amount of investment in your product company. Who, who, who did this survey or who, whatever. So there, there's a, a counterbalance to this, this kind of data that can be actually used against the people who paid to have it done.
And I think you have to be very intentional about what the message coming out of it, and not just make it sensational headlines. I mean our, our numbers, and I don't have economic numbers like this, but my numbers are much more conservative. You know, they're like 17%, you know, productivity gain when you take the people who are losing and the people who are gaining, and you know, maybe it's 35, maybe I'm being too conservative, but I'd rather be a little bit more on the conservative side than overhype it and fall into the Yeah, you were with all those people that were wrong.
I'd rather be wrong by being a little bit conservative. But, but Mitch, to your point though, according to the this report, it's actually causing C-level people to say, we need to invest more money in software development. They didn't say more money in developers.
They didn't say hire. Well if you, if you, if you read it though, they did say that people were still core to the software Development effort. So, and that goes to something I wrote this week, Mike, based upon what I saw someone, a very popular post I saw on LinkedIn that I, I didn't agree with.
And, you know, it was, the article is like, cockroaches shall inherit the earth because this woman said, if you think AI codes, well you're not a good coder. If you think AI writes well, you're not a good writer. If you think AI designs well, you're not a good designer.
Cockroaches outnumber us a billion to one, but we're still superior. Look, cockroaches have been around 300 million years and they'll probably be here long after we're gone. There's an argument to be made.
We're not so superior. But that being said, what AI is, seems to be good at might in fact be the 60% of tasks that developers, testers, security people, humans doing our day-to-day jobs, right? A lot of our, a lot of us in our day-to-day jobs kind of go through motions.
It's relatively rote stuff, right? We don't get a chance to come on here and, and spout off on what we believe what's going on in the world, right? A lot of people, they, 60% of what they do is very mundane and maybe AI does that really well or, or better or as good, but allows the humans to concentrate on those other 40% of things that require human only, a human can do.
Well, at least now for the, you know, foreseeable future, two to three years. Um, and, and that that will be a revolution that will spur productivity, that will justify these kinds of eye popping numbers. Um, and, and not just in software development across the board.
And maybe, maybe that is the lesson here that, you know, AI can help us do, but it's not, it's not, is it ever gonna write as well as the best human writer? I don't think so. Is it ever gonna code as well as the best coders?
I don't think, not not as I say in the foreseeable future. But if it does it good enough, let's not get per let's not let perfect get in the way and allow the best coders to do things that are worthy of their time. I think, Alan, if you spend a little bit of time with people who are using these development tools with ai, and I don't code is a living anymore.
I mean it used to, but I still do some things with, it just took over an internal project, uh, for my part of it with the code base that was written through ai. And I don't understand the code base. And you just look at some of the things that I know developers do I that I've done in the past, how much time you spend tracing down where errors are, where, where problems and issues are in the code.
Understanding a code base that you're not familiar with. You didn't write just those two things alone. And, and now I can see the productivity gains on my time.
'cause it take me a lot longer. 'cause I just don't do this any, every day. It's just those kinds of solve, solving those kinds of issues.
To Jack's point, it's not about writing the code. Yeah, you can write the code, you can generate a lot of code. It's all the other things you have to do to make it all work and make it all work together and solve the issues that come up with it.
You, I can see, I can see some great productivity gains. I mean, the fact that I could do what I'm doing with using AI tools is, uh, you know, it would take me a lot longer to get my skills back up to be able to do it at the same level. Oh yeah.
I think back when I was young and I used to go to the bookshelf to get a encyclopedia book to do research, I would've loved to had ai. But I'll tell you, I still miss my, you know what, my world was ignited when my mom got my brother and I World Book The World Book encyclopedia set. I know.
It was awesome, Man. I, I miss my encyclopedias. Anyway.
Hey, we're we're running late today 'cause we spoke so much on that first topic. We need to take a break. Let's come back.
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Home of Security Bloggers Network. Hey folks, we're back. And as Alan mentioned, black hat USA was last week and Alan was at the show.
So we're gonna do a little retrospective here and kind of say, you know, it's always interesting to think about what you saw at a show when you're at the show, but as you get some distance between you and the show, your memory of it and your thoughts about it seemed to change. So, Alan, what's your take here as you're looking back now at Black Hat and USA? Because from where I sat on the other side of the country, it seemed like for the first time there was a lot of chat about DevSecOps and application security and software supply chains.
Most of the announcements I saw had something to do with that. But you were on the show floor a lot. What did you see?
It was black hat. It was black hat and all its glory, but it was a different black hat. You're right, Mike.
Let me just quickly mention on software supply chains. I, I ran into my friend Alan Friedman. Alan of course is the father of SBOs, if you will, the godfather of SBOs.
And he left csa and this was his first black hat, not as part of the government. And I'll tell you, he's working on something called hbos Hardware Biller Materials. And shout out to Alan, keep your eye open for that.
Um, you know, I wrote a bunch of articles and as you're right Mike, as time goes on, my articles became more, I think, introspective, retrospective, sympathetic. I I will tell you, as the article highlighted here in your ticker says, there was definitely a subdued undercurrent of what's, when's the other shoe gonna drop? Budgets are tight.
Uh, people are worried about their jobs company spending though. I don't know if you have any, I was talking to some friends of mine. Do you know, black hat booths are two to three times the cost of RSA booths.
There's a lot less booths at Black Hat. It's a much smaller, it's a huge floor, but much smaller than RSA, but it's two to three times the cost. Um, but that being said, budgets are being cost.
Almost every company I spoke to has recently done layoffs. There's been layoffs just about every single company. Um, it's not just the security people, remember, it's the marketing people, it's the management, it's product management, it's product marketing.
It's, it's, it's everyone up and down the, you, you know, uh, even the media companies doing layoffs announced around blackout, right? My friend Rebecca Kitchens president of Tech of Not Techstrong of, uh, tech Target and former Tech Target, they call it now, Rebecca was laid off and, and she's been there 20 something years. She's an institution there, right?
You, you're seeing things happen here that kind of, you know, I spoke to the my friends at Cyber, uh, risk Alliance and what's going, so even the tech media and the security media businesses are, are feeling this. I, I think, and it's not just security. I think we're seeing it across the board in tech.
People are, you know, there's no joy in Mudville. There was an article in The Times, another article that I wrote, uh, not necessarily on Security Boulevard. Uh, but you know, the, the fun out of tech is, you know, is, is is deflating, right?
A lot of us, well, me anyway, I'm Well Mitch, you're the same age as me. Uh, we grew up in a time where people who aren't to chase dollars went into Wall Street hedge funds and, you know, uh, financial and, and and uh, that kind of thing. But then there were some of us who chased tech, the startup life, the promise of that, the sushi's on Thursday and all the perks that came and the security of working in tech.
And all that's gone. Tech Tech is running leaner and meaner, and I do mean meaner than I've ever seen it. That being said though, let me give you the other side of it.
Black Hat's about the People. It's another article I wrote. It's about the people stupid, right?
And, and I'm, I say that in two points. First of all, Jack, you've been in this industry long, longer than you wanna admit. All of you, Mitch, Mike, you've been around it too, Tracy, you are more on the dev side, but you're involved in security coming to this and to RSA and seeing the people I came up with, Mitch, you and I, you knew most of them.
You've seen the picture Rich and everybody. Yeah. Well, it's people that I've known 25, 30 years who are some of the top people in, in, in the industry these days and seeing them and catch out.
You know, we're Facebook friends or we're LinkedIn friends, I see what's going on. But seeing them face to face, hearing, hearing from them, seeing what they're doing, hearing what they're thinking, it's Chicken Soup for the Soul, right? It really is.
It, it's great to see those people. But on top of that, I think the message is clear. It goes to what I said before about you're never gonna replace the best developers.
You're never gonna replace the best security people because it's a thankless job. There's a lot of burnout. It's far from perfect.
But, you know, someone referenced Jack Nicholson and a Few Good Men. We sleep under the blanket, our freedom. We sleep under the blanket that they provide.
'cause they are vigilant, they are on guard. They are constantly fighting a fight that's almost impossible to win, but they fight it anyway. And we may give them better armor and more guns and weapons in the form of AI and, and everything else, but it's up to them who are on the front lines fighting this fight.
And that's what security is about those people. So I'll end right there. And I wanna say that, and I heard that Alan left, uh, uh, CSAW was happy that he found a, a spot, but I have to point out that it's a huge loss for, um, oh yeah, the government.
It's, it, it is, it's a bad thing for the United States that he's not there, Jen. It really is Jenny. Yeah, Jen Easterly left too.
And of course she was denied a position at, at, uh, west Point because Laura Luma, who was elected by the people to be the purveyor of who's allowed to work in our government, decided she's not. Hey, Alan, I I love your perspective on people and I agree with you and as we talk, say That again for me, Jack, one time. Come on.
Thanks for Joining us on this Episode of Text and Gang. We should end it right there. Done.
Um, you know, as we, as we discussed in before we kicked off the show this morning, that, you know, serious, you know, missing it this year didn't go, uh, partially to avoid being on the surface of the sun in Las Vegas in August is never fun. Um, there, you know, we are of an age cohort that is at the upper end and somewhat aging out of the working force. And, you know, you talked about layoffs and I'm wondering and sort of that feeling, and you, you wrote a little bit about this in one of your articles.
I wanted to get your perspective on sort of the age and possible age discrimination in hiring Age is real. You know what, talk to our friend, I don't know if you're ever on with j JP is on, but he, he's, he's written about this too, Jack. I, I did, I saw some research, some article that if you're over 55 in tech and you get laid off, not just in security in tech, if you're over 55 in tech, you, you don't have a good shot at getting rehired or not anything near where you were when you got laid off.
It. It's really, Yeah, that's, that's of, of the people. I know that's been a very big issue and you know, I'm, I wish that RSA and, um, black Hat and some of the other conferences, uh, that we participate in would talk about that a little bit.
That people who are in their fifties and sixties are very capable of and have such a wealth of experience that, as you said, it's the people that they can bring to bear. And for most, for a lot of these people, it's not about I need to have a salary commensurate with the last position. I was a, you know, vp, whatever, and therefore I need my quarter million dollar salary.
It's, they still wanna be part of the community and contribute and, and want and need to have a job. And bringing somebody in at not, you know, maybe a lower level or lower compensation is not necessarily a bad thing if you can leverage their experience. Yeah.
So I, I would say Def Con does a better job with that Jack than Black Hat and RSA does, I think Def Con really does kind of honor the OGs, if you will, you know what I'm saying? And, um, but, but it's true. But, you know, but you mentioned this, I'll, I'll go a little further that that is the problem is most people who are in their, you know, mid fifties, they're at the height of, they're at their, the height of their earning potential.
And to tell someone who's, you know, made 300,000 or, or more, and I, I know it sounds like a lot of money, but when you look at what it costs to live in America, but, you know, you tell someone who's made $300,000 that, Hey man, I'd like you to come in and help us. I could afford to give you a a hundred. It, that's a, that's a tough pill to swallow.
Um, and, and it, you know, but you pay for what you get. But don't, I think we need to remember though, and, and it, it struck me really, I, I was invited, uh, Thursday night to a Cobalt ne uh, not Cobalt, cobalt io, you know, the testing as a service. They had a party at the sphere I went to, and it was a lot of, I, a couple of hundred people, mostly Pentesters, a few journalists, analysts, but mostly Pentesters.
And, um, you know, looking around, looking around, first of all, I was surprised at how many people I knew, to be honest with you. But you know, it, it is a young man's game doing the, the pen testing thing, and our young persons getting better and, and more power to them. And they, and you know, and they're harnessing the best tools and they're making it happen.
And black hat in general is like that. But here's an interesting observation, and Jack, Mitch, you guys are around the security business person for person. I see more people my age at a security conference than I see more people than I see people my age, let's say at a DevOps conference or a cloud native conference, or Absolutely.
Right. So I, I do think the security industry, and this is a gut thing, I don't have any numbers to back it up, but I do think the security industry has done a better job of holding onto their OGs, if you will, than, than maybe software in general. Well, here's an idea to throw out, maybe not to make everything about ai, but maybe the last laugh of the aging population is we're the ones who will be training the AI as we, as we close, turn off the light and close, close the door of our careers, right?
I'm, these People are career. Yeah. That's, that's ironic.
Well, I mean Long careers as we, as we wrap things up when, when those stages occur, yeah, I think it's there, there's opportunity there. Opportunity or, you know, folks that are a little far, very far down the, the row in their career. Yep.
And I think, uh, this is industries, uh, specific, I've been working much more with the, the DOD and the DOE and they have a respect for older people. Hmm. They acknowledge their, um, expertise and their contribution in a way that's different from the private sector.
It's the, it's part of the culture, right? Yeah. It's part of the, the, the military culture to respect the authority of those who may have done something before you.
So if You're, and you're in your fifties, there's a lot of money going into to defense right now. We can say all we want about Mr. Trump, but he is put a lot of money into the defense sector, especially space and Air Force and Well, you know, I usually have a lot of respect for anybody who can throw me in the Briggs.
So that's how that works. Exactly. Don't throw back there.
We're not going back. Nice try, Mike. Nice try.
Well, Lemme but lemme just close out the black hat stuff. It is about the people, but the theme of Black Hat this year certainly was ai. What I thought was interesting in going from Booth to booth to talking to different vendors and people and so forth, was there's definitely people who market ai, right?
They have AI in their marketing, and then there's people who are actually doing AI in their products. Mm-hmm. And don't confuse, it's easy to confuse the two, but there's, there's definitely a de demarcation a delineation between those two types of companies.
If it's on the label that's slapped on the product, you know, it's probably built in. Yep. True, true.
All right. I are we done guys? Think so.
We are done. I think Jack, for anyone out there, we didn't hit Jack with anything and we didn't torture him. He was not harmed in the filming of this.
But, but, but, but thank you, thank you for, for your opinions on this. I think it was good to have a, you know, multifaceted discussion. Thank you Tracy, as always.
And Mitch and Mike, thank you for watching this. Hey, I probably did, I don't know, 18, 20 videos out here at Black Hat, the two days of the show itself. And, um, they'll be available on Textron TV and on the OTT channel and, uh, and the YouTube channel.
So please do check them out. There's some good ones in there, some stuff on Quantum and all kinds of good stuff. I, I had some great conversations.
Um, we've got Textron tv immediately following, and of course we'll be back tomorrow with even more great Textron gang. Until then, is Alan Shimmel. We're out.
