Robotics at CES, AI Data Center Spending, and Cybersecurity Outlook | TSG Ep. 995

Hey everyone. Welcome to another live Textron gang. No, we're not robots, but they seem to be everywhere.

Mike, John Schwartz, Terry Robinson, it's great to have you here live on the gang today. We're happy to be continuing this live TV experiment. I, I feel like it's, we're all mice in the lab here, but hopefully it'll work.

This is the first time we're trying it with people. A lot of people remote. I'm not in studio today.

John is out in Las Vegas. It's CES Terry. Terry's still behind the bri in front of the brick wall.

Think it's Saint Valentine's Day massacre or something. But I know, And of course Mike Azar joins us. Mike, as I mentioned, John's out in CESI think that's John on the screen here.

It's not some new humanoid robot, but robots are everywhere. John's been eliminated. He's, he's over in New York.

He's over there. John, John is our man on the ground at CES this week. So it seems like from out here, at least John in New York, that robotics, once again is like everywhere at CES.

And I know that, you know, we talk a little bit about this yesterday with Nvidia and what they were doing and the, and, and we mainly talk about forest, which are kind of becoming like a new robot, but there was a lot of announcements that are related to robots. So what's your sense, you know, are the robots taking over? They are, they're taking over our homes.

They're taking over our manufacturing. They're taking over our roads. They're taking over our skies.

They're taking over everything. They'll probably be taking our jobs pretty soon. So watch out.

Um, so there were a bunch of things last night actually, I went to the Lenovo, this Lenovo events, and it was, there was just a ton of announcements as you would expect. Jensen Wong was there. What a surprise.

But one of the things they did that really got my attention, and I actually went to get a live demo of it, was this mule type of robot that carries, uh, heavy, heavy amounts of, of material at dangerous sites. And it's being used, um, in China, and it'll be used in the US at energy related sites for inspections and moving cargo. That was pretty cool.

It's also incredibly expensive. Uh, it's probably upwards of, uh, 200, 200 grand, but, you know, if you can afford it, why not? Um, there was also, uh, at the, on the home level, there was something called Robo Rock, which has this, uh, vacuum there.

It's very mobile, very flexible. It got a lot of attention. Um, segway has lawnmowers.

Again, these are expensive, 2,500 bucks, but the idea is they do repetitive tasks and maybe they start, they use them on college campuses or large venues to take care of maintenance. Um, and, um, as you mentioned, Mike Nvidia and the cars, it, it was ubiquitous and, and it kind of made me think about, this is all about convenience if you can afford it, but it's also about eventually changing the way jobs are done, especially dangerous jobs or repetitive jobs or, or thankless jobs. And that kind of made me think about what that might mean for the labor force going forward.

And, um, it was kind of, it was a dystopian, to be honest, and, uh, while convenient and, and awesome and cool, like they, all the words they always use at CES, to me, it's also somewhat troubling on where we're headed as this stuff gets smarter and, uh, more ubiquitous. Hmm. Alan, over the break you had some, uh, comments about where we were heading with AI and the fact that it was gonna be in the physical world on an article that you posted.

Um, what is your sense of, you know, are we, from a society perspective, ready for all this Space? The final frontier? Uh, you know, I, we could, we could wr our hands and clutch our pearls and, and talk about dystopian and unsettled.

It's not gonna stop it. Robots are coming, robots are going to do a lot of physical labor and, and not just donkey work with all due respect, you know, carrying heavy loads into mine shafts or something like that. I, I think you're gonna have robot.

We already have robots that do surgery, right? Yeah. Right.

That's pretty delicate right there. Pretty fine tuned. You, you're gonna have robots that do a lot of physical, uh, activity, a lot of physical jobs.

Now what does that mean for us? Right? And, and you know, it's funny, uh, tomorrow on my shimmy says the, the title is what exactly are all these AI jobs anyway, right?

Because that's the thing we're hearing every time someone John says, what you say about, wow, it's, it's dis it's discerning that we're going to, you know, lose all of these jobs. People say, oh, but AI's gonna create a lot more jobs than it takes. Well, what exactly are those jobs?

And, and, you know, I don't want to let the cat outta the bed. You're gonna have to watch Shimmy says tomorrow. But basically, hey, someone has to work those robots.

Hey, So, so I that, that's a good point. You brought that up, Alan, because I'm, I'm, during the demo last night on stage, there was this robot at the Lenovo event at the sphere there I, I was watching off stage. There were two guys that were controlling the robots.

And so those were, I guess, ostensibly jobs created for the robot. But they're highly specialized people and, um, these are really expensive robots that do a lot of, that do the work of many people. So the, the math is kind of a little bit off kilter.

But again, we'll see. I mean, I, I wonder what these jobs are too, by the way. I I think you're gonna have mixed groups of workers, some of them being physical AI or robots or whatever you want to call them, mixed in with people, right?

And, and I said space in the beginning because I, I came across an article, Mike, and that was in what I wrote about where, you know, a lot of the so-called architects of ai, right? Uh, the Times Men of the Year are, are saying that space represents the next great place for jobs. And you could foresee like going to an asteroid and mining an asteroid for metal, where the robots are actually out on the surface of the asteroid, you know, actually mining the metals and so forth.

But there's humans, it's some control ship or some control outpost somewhere near that asteroid, if not on the asteroid, who kind of over oversee all of this and schedule all this and communicate. So it won't be a, like a fully robotic mission. It'll be a joint effort of people.

Boy, I dunno whether to think that is, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Sorry.

I was gonna say, I've seen that, I've seen that movie Alan, though, real quick, because, you know, that's when they declare independence from Earth and then they set up a whole nother country, right? Well, No, first someone says, open the pod bay doors. See, I was, Terry, what do you wanna say?

I was just gonna say, I don't know whether to think that's like super cool or super like, scary and distressing for the reasons you just said, Mike. You know, like, when did they take over or turn on us and, you know, but also just to be, I, I don't know, in a outpost in space directing robots to do things also sounds a little like, not a Joyful, but you look at it, I, I, I, you know, I, I will tell you, I, over the week, over the break, I had the chance, a friend of mine's friend came down to spend some time with us. We were out on the boat.

This gentleman works for Blue, uh, yeah. Uh, Jeff Bezos, this his space, blue Origin. Blue Origin.

And I'm going to tell you, he, he showed me videos that stuff that we don't really see, see origin Yeah. Publicly of, of stuff they're doing. And I am more convinced than ever that our children, our children's children will work in space and that, So there's stuff, there's different, Our generation thought we might work in space.

I mean, you asked if, Yeah, well, we did go to the moon once. Well, Yeah. And, and then you asked if we're prepared for this or are ready for this.

Well, maybe, heck yeah. If you watched the Jetsons when you were a kid, you know, you thought that this is where the future was gonna be, maybe a little bit sooner than you know, than it, than it is, right? Oh, Here, here, Terry.

I'm glad you said that. 'cause this goes again, I'm gonna talk about this tomorrow in my shimmy. Says, but here's a Shimel law for you.

Shimmy says law, the future never happens as fast as we think it will. Mm-hmm. Until it does, Until it does.

Suddenly it's there, right? Like, we grew up, go to the moon, we're gonna have the Jetsons, we're gonna have the flying cars, and then we're gonna have things like AI and quantum and robots doing all these things. And they always seem three to five years away, three to fusion energy, three to five years away.

And then all of a sudden it's here. And we're not, you Know, timeout. Somebody already has that law.

It's called, you know, the future's already here and it's just unevenly distributed. So that already exists. So I got a copyright claim already, right?

But I wanna come back to like earth here. Space is nice, but let's talk about something near in the near term. I think that, you know, having a robot that's gonna go in and put out a fire, so I don't have to send a fire department in there is priceless.

You know, that's 200, 250 grand no problem. Having, um, a robot that, you know, eliminates somebody's job that is, you know, making 60 grand a year. But the robot costs 200 to $300,000 a year.

I'm not sure that math works. So The robot doesn't cost two to 300 grand a year. The robot, well, It, it'll, the price will, the, the, the price will, the price will drop.

You know, so I was just anecdotally this morning, I was waiting in line for the Starbucks to open at five 30, and I was behind a lady who works for Caterpillar. So I started talking to her because, um, I did an interview with the CTA people, the people who run this or organiza this, this show, uh, Gary Shapiro. And they were mentioning agriculture.

And I asked her about, about the impact on the jobs. And I said, you know, this is gonna be really interesting, but like in manufacturing, are we gonna see a decline in people working in the fields or people gathering? And she said, well, a little shift.

And I was like, well, to what? And she just smiled. So I'm sure they have a plan, but that always worries me.

Mm-hmm. I mean, look, you know, this'll bleed into our next section. Well, so John, are they talking security at all there?

Are they talking security at all there? 'cause Robots? They did, actually, they did.

So, so, uh, we, we can talk about it. Yeah. They, they talk about security.

They talked about green and, and, and the environment and energy consumption, which I think we're gonna maybe talking about later. I, I'll read later. They weren't supported on the spot.

It was, well, they were, they, they're very touchy about this. Lenovo and Nvidia in particular kept going over this is, this will save energy costs. This will minimize the amount that's, that's necessary to make this all happen.

Red flag. Yeah. So let me, let me return to what Mike's saying though.

So guys, you gotta trust the market. You've got to trust the market. No sane business owner is gonna pay 200 grand a year for a robot to do the job that a 50 KA year worker does.

Just to be cool, right? This, this reminds me, I, I, you know, my son was accepted to the Kelly School at Indiana University. I went with him to accepted students day.

And I got into a beef with an economics professor there because he said that the, the, well, what do you expect from Indiana? But he said that the minimum wage, minimum wage creates artificial jobs, right? It gets in the way of progress.

And that, you know, they're just giving people, in essence, busy work. And this goes back to the article I wrote, we don't want to create AI jobs that are busy work jobs, right? Because the market doesn't work that way.

I don't need to create busy work jobs that are not economically viable. If I could get, if I could get a machine to do that job faster, cheaper, better, I'm going to use the machine. The market's gonna force me to, otherwise someone else will.

And they'll put me outta business. Unless I'm going to get subsidies or something from the government for giving people work, give 'em a shovel, shovel and have them dig dams in the Tennessee Valley. Right?

I, I don't think we're gonna come to that again though. So my only, my only, the only thing that really bothers me about this is if, say you have a $200,000 robot, what if it does the job of say seven to eight people who make $40,000 a year. So the math is gonna work to the advantage of those who can afford the robots and don't have to worry about benefits, for instance, and don't have to worry about, uh, somebody getting injured on site, um, or lawsuits.

So that's, that's kind of where I, I see some of this headed. But that, as you said, Alan, let's let the market play itself out. And it's gonna take several years.

And I'm sure, uh, wolf, Wolf, we always find our way with technology. I think There, there will be jobs we haven't thought of. I wish we had a better plan because I'm afraid that a lot of those people who are not gonna be going to work and their identity is wrapped up in their job, are gonna decide that, you know, they don't like the way the world is going and they're gonna vote in a way that might be suboptimal for our robotic future.

Well, yes. Vote to today's us is, isn't this what happened in manufacturing in the, in the seventies, eighties, nineties, and early? Right?

Isn't, isn't this why we find ourselves in the position we're in, hillbilly allergy and all of this stuff where you have vast swaths of the rust belt that have been made obsolete, Right? Right. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And you're taking away more than their jobs. It's like their, their dignity, their, their Identity, Everything.

Yeah. So that's tough stuff. I say send them to space or underwater.

We under water. No. I mean, this is gonna be an issue, right?

You're gonna have, and, and don't gimme the retraining. 'cause you're not going get some 50-year-old beer guzzling dude in, in Fort Wayne, Indiana to become a robotic engineer. It don't work like that.

But hopefully his son will be, or his daughter will be. Right? And, and there's to be a disruption and displacement of a generation.

See, and that's the thing. I mean, oftentimes when it happened, look what happened, like in Detroit, you know, when all those car jobs went away and assembly line, whatever, um, there was like a lost generation in there because first of all, the people that had been doing it didn't support the younger people coming through. 'cause they couldn't see a pathway for them to be, you know, they, they couldn't carry on the family tradition of working on the line and, you know, whatever.

And until, uh, Michigan was doing this kind of interesting thing, their economic development com, uh, committee about training kids and helping kids, uh, in schools develop like cyber programs because cars had computers and cars had security issues and all of that. And it was finally the first time that an older generation could relate to the, the younger ones coming up and feel that connection. But that was a long time coming.

That was decades. Yeah. Well, Bruce Springsteen writes songs about this So's Billy Joel, right?

Yeah. I wanna hear what those songs are gonna be going forward. Yeah.

We, we've gotta move on to our B block, but it's AI is gonna write them combination. So here in our live, uh, version, we don't really take break. We, we transition.

So we're gonna transition into our B block and we're gonna talk, you know, and, and in the same vein, data centers, the $8 trillion albatross around our next, that would, well, maybe it's not an albatross, but there's an $8 trillion price on our heads. And, uh, Mike, there, there's articles out here, right? Reports.

Yeah. Let me, So let me walk through the fundamentals of the, of the report from JLL, who's a commercial real estate company that specializes on a lot in data centers deals. And they're saying that there'll be, uh, 200 gigawatts of data center capacity by 2030, which is a 14% compound annual increase with about half of the workloads on those environments being AI driven.

And there's also saying that things will bifurcate in two different directions. One is we'll see AI data centers for training move to areas where energy is super cheap. And then we'll also have data centers that are showing up near, closer to the internet connection point because there'll be applications that are highly latency sensitive and we need the AI to run in real time.

And they're saying that, you know, we're building out for this level of capacity and that most of that capacity's already committed for, however, are also noting that, um, getting funding for these projects is already starting to become difficult because there are concerns that maybe we are starting to overbuild to the point where we're not gonna see that level of return on investment. And we don't know what the future of AI looks like in terms of large models versus small models and how much capacity we may or may not need. So there's a lot of unknowns here.

And Alan, I know you also wrote about the fact that people are investing in data centers and these things aren't creating a whole lot of new jobs either. So now as you kinda look at the, the outlook from here, what's your assessment? So my assessment is that 14% year over year growth is not enough to meet the $8 trillion number.

Quite frankly. I think, you know, I think that's actually a very conservative number to bring 200, just 200 gigawatts on by 20, 34 years from now. Um, you know, because we better make it up in the back half 'cause we got $8 trillion committed to these things.

Now that being said, it's still a pie in the sky number. 'cause where the hell you getting 200 gigawatts worth of energy to power these things and, and enough water to cool 'em down, assuming that there's a market need for that kind of capacity. And even if there is it, it's a bit of a letdown, then you get into the whole Arvin Krishna argument, which is that's great, but this is a flawed model that's not profitable.

So what the hell are we doing? And then let me put one more stick on the camel's back. 1 billion data center being built.

And this was a multi-phase, let me be clear, multi-phase data center, five phases between now and like 2035 were four or five different huge buildings as part of this AI factory. And it was going to create, not, not counting the construction jobs. Yes, they'll be jobs constructing these things, but those are temporary and transient permanent jobs created in the data center.

All of 37, 3 7. Now, yes, it'll generate a lot of property tax though. The, the, the locality, the municipality in the article you'll see is talking about a 70% tax abatement if they do this.

So they're only gonna collect 30% of the actual property taxes that are due there. What's it gonna cost people living there in increased energy expenses? We don't know.

But for 37 jobs, unless we're gonna take all that property tax and pay it out to people in some kind of basic income, whatever they call that, right? Uh, the basic income, everyone will get on the doll and on the government, and we could all sit home, drink iron head beer, watch football and t-shirts or something. What, what exactly are we, what is this the future we want?

Is this the, you know, this ain't Star Trek. No, but you know, I think a lot of these things are also popping up in, in economies or, or regions that are desperate for something, right? Um, I present to you my home state of Louisiana, uh, water soaked, uh, oil and gas soaked Louisiana, which they have high hopes for, um, for data centers there, right?

And, and so Meta's got their big one in the northern eastern, uh, uh, corner of the state. But now in my, uh, the, the town where I grew up, Shreveport, Louisiana, they're just wanting to build a data center, uh, you know, in town basically. And the planning commission, uh, nixed it as did the citizens, but the city council just over overruled them toward the end of last year.

And that was the big discussion. What are the resources that are gonna be taken? What's the yield for us?

I mean, this is an indiscriminate data center. Nobody knows what it might, you know, who might attach themselves to it. But, you know, there's a, I think an estimate there that it would be no more than like a hundred jobs.

Yeah, no, they're not, they're not laid these data centers. They're not, Can I, can I make this, can I make this political? Because I think this is all really politically tinged.

And I also think it's that part of this tech bro, uh, mandate or dream. So they want, and they promise to spend billions of dollars on these facilities, trillions and the trillions, right? And the White House says, oh, we're manufacturing in the us.

We're gonna build in the us we're gonna bring jobs back to the us. There's a total disconnect. But just based on what you, what you found out, Alan, and, and what Terry just mentioned, there are gonna be a lot of these facilities not employing very many people.

And who's gonna benefit most of the, the, the tech companies that are using are, and I don't tell you who else you gonna, They're passing the cost along John. It's the real, it's a real estate play. And look who's the president?

Absolutely. This is When Lauren Hammer, everything looks like a nail, You know? And I, I, and I don't mean to be the guy who to stir the pot, but this really does p**s me off.

Wait, wait, wait time, Terry, will the citizens of your hometown vote out the city Council over This issue, even No part Of Louisiana? Not because they, they consistently vote against themselves, you know, on, on just about everything. So the city council will probably stay right in place.

Maybe they'll lose one, you know, one, one seat or something. But Bill Billy Allergy. But it's, you know, there's all this hope.

It's a depressed place that city, you know, when you look at it. Mm-hmm. Growing up it had 250,000 people.

It's like about 180 now, or maybe less. There's just been a, a flight out, even kind of starting with my generation of leaving town and going to Dallas or going to New Orleans or going someplace else where there's more economic opportunity. So I think people are pinning their hopes on this because there's some desperation there.

And it's also, you, you know, it lives and dies on oil and gas. It's in the middle of the Haynesville shale. It lives and dies.

You know, You, you, me, you mentioned meta in this facility in Louisiana that made me think back to a couple of years ago when I was in Kansas City and in the outskirts of the airports, which is pretty desolate area, honestly. Meta was building a major data center, and this was the hope and dreams of everyone. Oh, this is gonna make us a, a tech center.

And I, when I see this, it just, I mean, it just happens time and again. So that, but that's the fallacy of the data center dream. It doesn't make you a tech center because quite frankly, where a data center is located really has nothing to do with the jobs that, that technology is, is enabling and empowering.

Because, Well, I I will say one thing about the Shreveport area, and this is maybe the only thing that could help change for, for good for them is Parksdale Air Force Base, the Sac Man is right there. That's a very important base. And it's highly, they, they've developed a highly technical, you know, staff and whatever.

And, and so, look, I, There's no doubt that military bases are hub zones or development zones, right? Supporting the base, supporting the soldiers there. How much Is that gonna be, you know, how much does that really yield for the overall community?

But that's not the data set. Here's the problem. Our economy, and so much of, you know, Mike, that's why I I, the the study you cited to start this whole conversation from the real estate firm, I, to me it's suspect because it's a real estate firm.

They think of jobs as construction workers. I've got carpenters, electricians, concrete folks, a HVAC people, and it's gonna take us three years to build this billion dollar colossus. And they're gonna, we're gonna invest a billion dollars in the real estate and the building of it.

We're gonna have a shiny building. And, and so much of America, so much wealth, not just the current occupant of the White House, so much wealth in America has been created by real estate. You know what they say, buy land, God's not making it anymore, right?

Yeah. And, and so we are geared towards real estate deals like this, right? And that's why you see people like Trump and Kushner and, and these real estate folks, this is something they understand.

They may not know Jack squat about AI and GPUs and what Jenssen's talking about, but they know about real estate and construction. And that to them is the, the, the, the grail, not the jobs that are gonna be there once the construction's done. Right.

And if we don't wind up using the data center, there's money to be made and tearing it down. But I also think the locals are also, uh, they're also locals are not counting on the fact that if, you know, if you talk to folks in Virginia, they'll tell you about this is data centers are damn loud. And, you know, suddenly, you know, that is not just some quiet building sitting on the corner.

This thing is starting to, you know, hum in your ear every day and it becomes part of your, your life. But, But Mike, we're a country that accepted black lung disease for people to go and work steel mines or iron mines. Well, And we're going back to that.

I mean, we're reduce, we regulation is They don't care. I think what they will care about is when their electric bill goes up, then they'll, so That's, that's interesting because it's, it's CES that's, that's an undercurrent these companies are trying to get ahead of that argument about in terms of energy usage. So Lenovo is, is going overboard.

And then at the Nvidia events, so I'm trying to, I'm trying to figure out the password is for the, for the wifi at the event. And the events password is green, you know, fill in the blanks. And, and it's just, you know, it's just this, they started a corporate blog about how they're environmentally conscious and how they're responsible citizens.

So that's, that's part of, of selling the, the dream. I think. I think, Matt, I think Matt is gonna decide that paying the electric bill for all the locals in Treeport or wherever the hell it is, is around the era.

So they're gonna make that issue go away. Yeah. Well, I wanna, I mean, I, I didn't get to read the article, but I sort of bookmarked it someplace there, there's a huge thing out, uh, just a few days ago on Memphis, right?

Because there's that, that data center that's like in Memphis or right in that area or whatever. And the quality of life issues, like the quality of life and the, the problems that residents have been having, I think Noy was, uh, one of them, Alan. Um, you know, it, it just, people just don't think, but I was actually encouraged.

I've been on a couple of, uh, threads online, uh, with, with, uh, different groups in Shreveport. And there are a lot of knowledgeable people who, you know, were kind of saying, you know, we gotta think about the noise thing. We gotta think about how much, you know, we're, we're footing the bill for the power.

We're, you know, what's, where's the water gonna come from? Yes, Louisiana is soaked with the water, but what, you know, uh, that doesn't necessarily translate into the resources that a data center needs to get function. So anyway, a robust, a more robust discussion than I thought.

But people have gotten fairly astute down there on some things, because that's Mike Johnson's district and they've had to pay attention to what, uh, Yeah. You know, the one, the one thing that is that I really like about ai, uh, one, the one thing that that the undercurrent I really like about the whole topic about AI is people are more, more engaged with this technology than any other technology I've ever come across. They, uh, have an active, um, curiosity about how it's going to impact them.

And they're actually doing some of their own research to, to see what the repercussions are gonna be. 'cause it's so inevitable. So it, it, to me, it's encouraging actually that people, uh, are looking into the impact in line.

I, I think AI is a technology people love to hate. I think people are distrustful of it. You know, they, they see it.

Yeah. They wanna learn about, yeah. And so they wanna know, but they, they don't like it.

They don't like, the more they, they re, the more they learn, the less they don't. And they're duped by it all the time. I mean, so, Yeah.

We'll see. Hey, we, we've gotta, we've gotta transition once again, I gotta come up with a better word than transition. But, um, we, We really, We, we need to move along here to our C block.

And we're not gonna talk about robots and jobs being taken. We're actually maybe gonna talk about some new cybersecurity jobs. Like, oh, we're always talking about new side, the, the, uh, the, the, the mythological cybersecurity jobs gap, right.

Between skills and jobs. But Mike, we, we've got a new, a new article out on this. Yeah.

Yeah. Terry wrote this based on a report from, I think it's KPMG, right? Yeah.

And they're forecasting that we'll see a significant increase in cybersecurity spending in 2026. And this comes off a year where a lot of people pulled in their horns 'cause they were uncertain about the economy. But maybe the economy's not as bad as people thought because well, uh, we don't know.

Or in certain segments is better than other places. But whenever the driver is, it also seems like the nature of the battle is changing, Terry. And well, we gotta invest to keep up the fight.

'cause the bad guys are changing their tactics. Well, yeah. And I'm just gonna, I I, I'm not gonna throw a lot of water on this, but just gonna harken back to something that Alan said about the future, that, you know, it, it, it's slow and coming until it finally does.

Right? It just, uh, you know, it, we think it's gonna, I think that's the same thing with like cybersecurity budgets. Um, uh, we start saying, you know, oh, they're getting bigger.

They're getting bigger until they don't, right? Or until they cut back. So I, I don't wanna be too pie in the sky about, you know, the, the results of this, of this, uh, study.

But yes, it's the KPMG cybersecurity survey, um, for 2025. And, you know, I think their overall message here that, so more than half of the people surveyed said their budgets were gonna increase between six and 10%, which is, you know, pretty significant stuff. Um, but I think the overall, uh, you know, analysis by KPMG on this was that, um, maybe security like zooming up like this or going up like this is gonna point to this sort of boom that's happening.

That people and organizations are finally seeing, um, cybersecurity as fundamental to business or an accelerator for business and not just a cost center, which we've been talking about forever. And key to the in to innovation, you know, reducing risk and all of that. The, these are all topics that, um, I think we discussed quite, quite regularly.

Um, you Know, I've been in security a long time, Terry. Mm-hmm. And, and like, like, like Spring follows winter and Summer follows spring.

And these are the days of our lives. Every year about two to three months before RSA, we start seeing the surveys come out. And lo and behold, security is the top priority.

It is eight, number one top of the heap. We are putting our budgets in. I can't wait to buy the latest technology because the bad guys have gotten smarter, but we're catching up.

And, and Ladi, Dody do Dody da. And then sometimes right after RSA right before Black Hat, we, we, we start hearing how we're losing the battle. We've had more breaches this year than last year, and historically high.

And the cost per breach is terrible. And it's the same old, same old, and our corporate fat cat still have T-Rex arms that don't reach their pockets, and those money never gets spent. Well, that's, yeah.

So That's, I could have wrote this for them and saved them a couple of dollars. I could have had some robots do it cheap. Um, Well, you know, yes.

And I mean, that's what I mean, it's like you get these kind of, oh, this real positive thing, but then suddenly the reality is not, uh, it doesn't, it doesn't bear out. Right? Um, but I, I think what part of what was interesting about this is there's a lot of effort going into, um, resilience.

And then not, not, you know, not surprisingly, our old buddy AI is driving so much of the security concerns and so much of the pitch for dollars. And, um, and they, they have some traction now within, maybe because of what we were talking about. People are doing the research, they, you know, are interested.

Uh, they're AI curious, right? But they also are AI averse and, and they're worried about what it's gonna mean for security. And so, uh, they're appropriately putting money toward that.

But how it actually gets used in the future, or if it gets used, or if it makes a real difference, that's an, those are other questions altogether. I don't, you know, Agreed. I, I think the other thing, you know, one of the, the cycles I've seen in security over the years is, let's call it the innovation cycle, right?

We have years where, you know, you get the VCs ringing their hands or, or lamenting, oh, there's no innovation insecurity, we don't see anything new. It's the same old, same old. It didn't work before.

What makes you think it's gonna work now? And then they're looking for innovation, you know, and then someone comes up with a next gen firewall or a next gen this, or a future proof that, and, and all of a sudden innovation springs like flowers, you know, crocuses in the spring. Um, I AI is that innovation point for the security industry, whether it's using security to make our AI more secure, right?

So let's, let's secure AI generated code. That's innovation. Even though, what's the difference between securing AI generated code and human generated code?

All code is code. It's the same technology, but we're gonna slap a let's secure AI generated code security tool on it. And ooh, I've got innovation and everyone gets excited and I'll open up my budget a bit.

So it's securing against ai. Or the other fact pattern you're gonna see is I'm using AI to make us more secure, right? Here's my innovation.

What we were using before was not AI enabled, so it sucked, but now I've got ai and it's gonna be a lot more better at securing your code or securing your infrastructure or securing your insider threats or what have you. And so AI rep AI itself, the fact that it's AI enabled represents the innovation, right? Either one of those fact patterns or enough to get corporate boards to write checks because they see innovation.

It's like in politics, people always vote for change in security. They vote for innovation, Right? And, and that's, I think one thing that this study, you know, if you dive deep into it, sort of touches on in the people that I talk to, is that idea of innovation and that idea of security cutting across business rather than just being confined to the security question itself, right?

It, it allows for innovation, it allows for risk reduction, you know, so supposedly, um, but if you think it's gonna create more jobs because these budgets have gotten bigger, Send them to Shreveport baby. I would say I'm hopeful on the following points, right? I think that AI will significantly reduce the time to investigate security incidents.

And I think we raised an inordinate amount of time doing that. And so I'm hopeful that the job itself will become a little more enjoyable, and maybe I'll even be more successful, simply because, you know, I can ask in ai, you know, what is the probability of the root cause of this thing? And it'll come back to me in something in natural language.

I may not take that as gospel, but at the very least, I'm like a little further down the road to figuring out what went wrong with this thing, right? And then secondarily, I think that, you know, security people, if you talk to them, they aren't burnt out and a lot of them are tired of, you know, running through those data analytics exercises. And if we can shorten that and reduce that, you know, maybe the whole job becomes more enjoyable.

I don't think AI is gonna replace the need for security people anytime soon, but I think that there's a lot to be said for spending some money to make that task a more successful and b, less tedious. Yeah. And, and again, I mean, I think you're right about that, and I don't think it's gonna replace, you know, in the near term, but there is a prevailing sentiment that they're not, these bigger bud budgets aren't gonna translate into additional jobs, right?

They might not, you might not be cutting jobs with ai, but the additional jobs, it's just gonna let you use your same small team and it's gonna scale because you've got the dollars and you've got AI and, you know, whatever. It's gonna, it's gonna eliminate jobs that never existed because we had all these open positions that nobody fulfilled, anyone, nobody Fulfilled. Yeah.

What was it? The 3 million, whatever. Yeah.

So maybe, yeah, the annual story about how this 3 million open positions in cybersecurity will go away. But, you know, Never, never, never. There Seem to be a lot of these, like these circular narratives in cybersecurity, right?

Yeah. No, yeah. I mean, it's like, it's like, it's just an insane Yeah.

Process, right? It is. It, it, you know, when you hear long enough and you recognize the patterns.

Yeah. And especially when you could map them to RSA and black Hat, there's definitely a cycle that's controlled by those two shows. There's a site of security reports, news product releases.

Now, now, you know, that said, right? We talk about all those open positions, and this is a, an example of one, but you know, there's a kid over here in Westchester who's got a master's in cybersecurity. He's tendon bar because he can't find a job in the space.

So, but he's got his degree, but he never got experience. That may be what it is, but, you know, so breaking into the field is still not easy. No, no.

That, that hasn't changed. And that's the biggest thing I hear from people. You know, all these kids who actually took cybersecurity in school, I and I came up, no one took cybersecurity in school.

You, Well, what's cybersecurity mean? No. Or InfoSec.

There was no, I know. Well, so maybe Even on a broader scale though, like, I'm sorry, Terry, but even on a broader scale, not just cybersecurity, any type of people coming outta college are gonna be facing the same reality. There are a lot of studies showing that right now, our job, job market entry level is really Hard.

It's a difficult market. And I remember a few years back, they even talked about in law firms how, you know, kids are coming out of college. And I know Alan, you and I both had kids that, uh, that passed the bar this year or last year and, you know, or whatever, uh, onto their careers.

But, um, they were talking about their, the, the, just the practical things that they couldn't do that now these law firms were gonna, were having to hold sessions to train kids. So it makes me wonder in the area of security, and, and given how hard it is to get in, if there's better ways to coordinate between states and the federal government and businesses and, and colleges and universities, to have a pipeline that's stronger. So you're not just, you know, you don't just shoot out of the university and then, oh my God, where No, I think it goes to are, are these programs cybersecurity for instance, preparing people for the real world, for the real job.

That's why I like programs like Northeastern University that has their, uh, co-op program where they actually help you get a job while you're still in school. And you, you, you know, six months of your school you're working, and then six months you're in school and six months you're working in school. We need more programs like that, I think, than having some poor guy get a frigging master's degree in cybersecurity.

Right. Well, and that goes back to what I was saying earlier in Detroit about the car thing. I mean, the economic development co commission there did a really good thing about engaging junior high and high schools and then engaging universities and the car companies.

So these kids would, some, sometimes know as far back as, you know, their freshman year in high school, that there was a pathway for them and a job waiting for them when they got out of university, if they stayed like, sort of on this track because everybody was on board and they built a strong pipeline. Now, I don't know what's happened to it in the meantime, 'cause I looked into that several years back and, you know, uh, pre pandemic. So I don't, I don't know what ultimately happened there, but, um, it was, they were really trying to build that strong, you know, pipeline and make it practical for kids like they're working on cyber projects while they were in high school and actually getting hands-on experience, high school, college, and then into the real world.

So, so what impact do you think AI will have on all that? Because I hear from, you know, a lot of the seasoned people in security or even DevOps or whatever, that they're saying that, you know, well, I'm using AI now instead of some junior kid to take care of a task. And so there's fewer entry level positions by definition.

Well, right. And then of course, that creates a gap too, doesn't it? And pipeline further down, because you don't have people that have had this hands-on training or apprenticeships or whatever.

They, they do. You skipped that, that Either that or we need to change the education system so that the people who are coming out of the schools are not as junior as they are today. Well, That's, that's right.

And that's why I think that's a, that's a, a collaboration between business, government and, and, and, uh, education. You know, I think that's, you know, In California, in in, yeah, in California, they're trying to do that. Newsom has tried to, tried to do this where he is kind of incorporating, integrating the government and, and the education system to better prepare students for ai.

And I think, you know, it goes back to stem. Um, and I think AI in a sense accelerates this, but, we'll, I mean, again, these, these, these things are good in, in concepts, but in reality, you, you actually do need a practical education. You need hands-on training, right?

Especially when you're in college, Right? Mm-hmm. But that's, I mean, that's it.

If it's done right, you get that too, don't you? I mean, the university's work and the government works with business, and you get that hands-on training all the way down the line. But I, I don't know, you know, it's, I don't see a lot of states committing to that at this point in time, but I, I don't know if it's the state's responsibility.

I, I think, you know, I think it's the school's responsibility to prepare their students for jobs. I think it's the student's responsibility. I think it's the market at play.

I think industry has to tell universities. Oh, Well, yeah, in California though, it's just because, like, it's such a vested interest though in terms of, in terms of the tech education that try to keep the jobs within the state or keep the companies here. Um, that I think that that's, it's purely motivated by that.

And then the educators have to, my wife's a teacher, so it's, it's, it's a frustrating process and, and given how, I won't get into the politics and education system, but it, things move slowly, grind slowly, Slowly Everywhere, Right? But back in the day, you know, you used to become like a, if you wanted a job in a space, you know, you, you basically were a junior apprentice for like three or five or four years before you actually got to be a full-time employee or whatever it was. So maybe we're going back to the future.

I don't know. Yeah. There was also the, That's where I came into this conversation.

First, Trump administration. There, there was an apprentice program that they was much bhu that Mark Benioff talked to you about. And where did that go?

The app. You're fired. The Apprentice, you're fired, you're done.

Trump and The Apprentice. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Hey, we're over time though. We gotta end this live text, Sean Gang, we hope you've enjoyed it.

Hey, appreciate the, uh, con the comment on LinkedIn from Mr. Singh. I always appreciate all comments.

We'll try to incorporate them as we go forward. But we're out for now. We've got Textron TV coming up behind this.

And, um, Terry, John, Mike, thanks for joining. John. Enjoy the rest of, uh, your Vegas trip there, Terry Wound.

I'm leaving soon. Okay, well, flight six, I'm getting the hell outta here now. I, well, you've put your time into Vegas.

You got, you got your three day limit on Las Vegas, right? Yeah, I, I hit the 72 hours, Mike. I'm done.

I get it. But until next time, there's Allen Hummel for the gang. We're out.

We hope everyone's enjoyed it.