Techstrong Gang – April 15, 2025

Hey, everyone. Should you get a new phone before the tariffs? But wait, the tariffs aren't on, but yes, they're coming back.

Who the hell knows you are watching? Text Drunk Gang. Hi everyone, it's Alan Shimel.

Happy Tuesday and welcome to Textron Gang. We've got a great show lined up for you today and, uh, some great folks to talk about it with. Let me introduce you to our Tuesday panel.

First of all, he doesn't look nautical today. It looks like he's a land lover. Oh, he's in Canada.

Okay. There he goes. He's back home.

Or one of his homes in Canada. He's our resident cyber expert. Chris Blas.

Hey, Chris. How you doing? I'm good.

Good to see Alan. Yeah. Yeah, we're, uh, we're snowbirds.

I turned 60 last week and we've been playing this as one does all our life. You know, my wife's Canadian, I'm American, so yeah, it spring. So it's time to be in Canada instead of the surface of the sun where you are.

Yes. Well, here we are, truthfully, I just got back here last Thursday, right? I, I was in this, I mean, I was in the Alps and then Lake Como, so it wasn't that hot there, but I'm digging your, your Blue Jays shirt there, Chris.

Good for you, man. Uh, we'll go from Canada. I don't know how warm it is in Colorado, but our next two folks are in Colorado.

Has spring, has spring sprung there yet? Or is it still snowing? Guys?

Classic spring for Colorado. Yesterday we, yesterday and Saturday we were in the beautiful eighties degrees. The blossoms are all out, and last night it snowed.

Yep. That's how it goes. Colorado.

I woke up this morning to, I woke up this morning to adjusting. Yeah, but it could be back to seventies by noon, so Oh, oh, yeah, easily. Yeah.

That's Colorado. Well, 40 degrees. No problem.

Well, used to freak me out though, was all the software engineers used to wear, come to the office in shorts when there was a dusting out there. And I'd be like, what are you doing wearing shorts? They'd be like, oh, I don't warm up.

It don't warm up. Oh, the two rules in Colorado is you must own at least one dog and you must wa go around in shorts all 12 months of the year. All right, there you go.

Anyway, from Colorado, from, uh, FU data. Oh, she, she's an expert in a lot of things. That's why we love having her here.

Camberley Bates. Hey Kimberly. How are you?

I'm doing great, thank you. Including, I might add the New York Yankees. It's a weird connection.

We could talk about it in murder times. Not An expert in the Yankees, but, you know, but you all I'm hearing about, we, we, we need to have a session on, well, should there be a market? Should there be a cap on, uh, salaries?

Well, no, but the Dodgers figure out a way to, they get these people to defer their salaries. It's, it, that's what we need to have the cap on. Make salaries real.

Don't no, no financial shenanigans. Anyway, moving over in Colorado, he's fu uh, uh, DevOps analyst and original gang member Mitch Ashley. Hey Mitchell, how are you?

Hello. From Colorado. We have the bookends, east and west parts of the metro area from Denver.

A lot of Coloradoans would take offense to that. I actually, you know, I was in the Swiss house with these, this nice couple on their honeymoon. They were from the Springs.

He's a fireman for Colorado Springs. I said, I love Colorado Springs. He said, yeah, you may not realize, but you know, it's only a matter of time until we're bigger than Denver.

'cause we're growing much faster than them. I said, oh, that's great. Great.

Good for you guys. Have fun. You gonna start with a guy on his honeymoon.

But, um, anyway, not sure that's a great thing to aspire to, but, okay. Yeah. Anyway, moving on from Colorado.

We're back here in Florida, our Echo Insights analyst and advisor, things green and sustainable and anything connected with it. Bonnie Schneider. Hi Bonnie.

How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Great to have. Well, it's, it's not just me, it's all of us. It's great to have you on.

Thanks. Alright, with that, guys, let's get right down to it. So, you know, excuse my pain in the neck from the whiplash, but, you know, but this, this is the chaos we live under.

It's on, it's off. It's off. It's on, it's partially on.

It's partially off. It's on for now, but it won't be later. Cam, Kimberly, what's the latest going on with and and specifically we're talking tariffs now on phones, computers, electronics.

I think So first of all, we're recording this on Monday and I know we're gonna pro process it on Tuesday and anything can happen in the next 24 hours. So we need to be time, time sensitive here. And in fact, Trump came out, or I'm not sure, I didn't see his actual quote, but I know they, they're saying that there's gonna be more to be said in the Next 25.

Yeah, no, it's only a temporary reprieve. Right. It's a temporary reprieve.

But what Lutnick was saying on, um, the news is basically they're looking at how they don't wanna peanut butter, how they're doing semiconductors. So it's gonna be a cutout way of how they're going to do tariffs on semiconductors or computer systems. So it covers, I did look at the a CC codes, what they're talking about.

So it's all data processing, it's telecommunication, tel telco kind of materials. It's all semi some of the semiconductors pieces of iPhones, et cetera. So it does cover the gamut of technology that we have.

And I think what they're doing is they're saying, okay, so there is gonna be a tariff, you know, count, count, don't count it out. And that tariff, they're gonna look and say, how do they motivate, put the tariffs on there to motivate bringing back on shore. And that's, you know, the tire kind of focus that they're looking at is bringing that supply chain or those supply capabilities on shore where we bring manufacturing here.

And so that's sounds like it's more of a scalpel them a sledgehammer on it or whatever. But you know, that's kind of where it is right now. And more to be revealed in the next 24 and then the next 48 in the next 72 hours.

Yeah. It'll go back and forth. 'cause they, they, they make this up as they go.

But, but here's my question. Five pound hammer. I think we're just going a little bit smaller, a ball pen hammer as they call it, but No, but here's so for the next three to five years until we could build that up in how should we use tin cans and strings.

Mm-hmm. You know, or should just everything grind to a halt and we'll blame it on Biden or something. You know?

I don't think they're, I don't think that's what they're trying to do here. I think they're saying yes, we, we, we can't, there's a couple different things on the electronics piece of it, you know, why haven't we really executed well on the, um, semiconductor kind of what we, whatever the name of that that law was for that, that was the Chip sack. The chip sack.

Thank you very much. Yeah. The chip sack.

Well, there's all kinds of regulations around building and unless we chop and do something about that, it's gonna take you three to five years to build something. So they understand that they're, they're looking at, I'm assuming, looking at the regulations at the same time. They're looking at, you know, how fast can we get here?

Making sure that, and and they are people that understand CapEx investments in their long-term investments to be had in order to bring it on board. So they're not stupid in terms of what that means when you drop some money. So how do I give assurance to these guys that if I start building and working on a semiconductor or whatever manufacturing facility here, how do I know that in two years, when, you know, when and if the House of Representatives changes over all, this doesn't disappear, or in four years when we have a, you know, an and possibly a new, um, you know, new, new, not possibly we will have a new president, a new president in place, all those kind of things so that they, they they can't be that stupid.

And you know, I'm not, I mean, I'm not as smart as some of these guys that are doing this, and I know this, so Kim, I you've got my vote. You know, I, I'll tell you a lesson I learned in my career, sold my first company to a rollup. And there was some very, I thought very smart people running that show.

And they used to do their exec meeting. I wasn't part of the exec team that, and I used to sit in my office saying, you know what? They're going to come up with the right things to do.

I can't wait to hear the new strategy and I'm gonna execute it and be a good soldier until I got finally promoted into the exec team. And I sat in those meetings and listened to those morons, and then I realized the emperor, and then I realized the emperor had no clothes. Mm.

And you know, my fear is, as a matter of fact, I know this emperor is star raving naked. And, and that the people advising him, though they may be smart businessmen, and they know from CapEx, I'm not quite sure they get it, that they grapple or the, you know, the, the old question is when ha have any of them gone to an Apple store lately to buy something? When have they, you know what I mean?

They're, they, the problem is, is when you're so wealthy, like at that level, you, you are not, you are not in, in the every man's shoes. And that, that's really what I worry about is what happens to, for my sister-in-law who's 72 years old and is contemplating, should I run out and replace my phone right now? Or, or wait.

And, and my phone that use, she won't use an apple too expensive. Uh, but my android's now gonna be, you know, twice the price. Yeah.

And I do do appreciate and very much so under respect what you're saying, um, in that, because there is, even in my own kind of keeping up with the education with the, the people that are either in Washington or outside of Washington or some, like, um, and I won't name some of the podcasts that are out there that I've listened to that are, you know, some really super smart economists. And I was talking to my husband on this and I said, what it feels like is that, and we've heard it, that what is it, you know, 20% of the people weren't really impacted, well, didn't think they were impacted by the stock market because they don't have stock. Right.

They're, they're not playing in the market. And I'm like, that, that's, that's why there's all the screaming going on, partly is because you have the extremely wealthy that have been impacted by, by what's going on. And, and that they, what they don't kind of hear is what's happening with That middle market.

How, right. I mean, it's main street versus Wall Street. Right?

Right. That's the old saying, main Street versus Wall Street. I, I, look, I'm off of shortening our supply chains and building an American capability.

My point is, or my feeling is you do that by out competing, out, innovating, outperforming your competition, not by building walls. Right. Because when you build walls, either you gotta keep those walls up forever, or it's just you, you're creating a, a, a, a, a unrealistic environment that sooner or later is going to crumble.

Right? You, you, we've gotta figure out a way, you know, and you, like you mentioned, making it easier to open foundries or chip factories or processing or what have you. Yeah.

It all sounds good till they want to build it in your backyard. Right? And then you get the tree huggers and the these folks and, you know, all of that.

And we haven't even touched on another thing in spite of what some may say, making an iPhone is not about getting hundreds of little people with tiny screwdrivers putting screws in the phone. There's a lot more to assembling these products. Th this ain't Henry Ford and we're not making Model T's.

We don't ha we Chris, You know, so let me, I'm trying to think what to add to this. And, and I hate to go back to my, my standard trope, but this is how I end up with this whole inevitability curve sort of thing. Right.

You know, so you are where you are, you always are. Right. And I, I, you know, it is what it is.

I actually liked that when I was at seeing, we were all singing because this is where we are. Right. And we are going to work for it from here.

Like it or not, you know, pick an analogy, you're on the water storm happens, your thing broke. It is what it's, you're working from there. And all of us, you know, everybody here on the screen, you know, we literally travel around.

We deal internationally. We, we think outside of our, our daily life. 'cause that's what we do.

And, and now I happen to be in my summer plumage. I'm here in Canada, and Canada is adjusting to this. The rest of the world will adjust to this.

Right. You know, I, I, you know, a friend here works at a metal shop. They're now doing quotes that last 24 hours, not 30 days or six, you know, forget that right now.

You know, that's where we are right now. And that causes a lot of stresses that are gonna, you know, things will adjust. The US right now is, has created a a, a set of conditions around itself that are going to be persistent.

Everyone else will adjust to it. Will Canadians actually be buying their Android phones through the US at all, or bypassing entirely? Um, and we'll work all that out.

And the, you know, frankly, you know, I I had not been impressed with the, uh, Canadian Liberal party for a long time and as in his last iteration, but I'm liking what I see with Mark Kearney now. Right. We'll see what they do.

But this sort of, as you said, Alan, you, you know, Canada as an example of what's going on, we'll have to decide how fast it can put an entity pipeline east to west and deal with in a Canadian way, the environmental and indigenous and all the other work, uh, issues with that. And as a interested pseudo outsider, I, I get the feeling they'll work it out. Okay.

They'll get it done quickly. They won't spill oil all over the, the, the migrant in geese. Um, and they'll work it out.

So. Oh, no, there's no doubt. I think they will.

I mean, look, as I mentioned, I'm just back. I spent, I don't know, the two, two and a half weeks in London and Zurich and Milan spoke to a lot of people. Their attitude is, look, the US is gonna be do what the US wants to do.

They, they're amazed why we would give up our position in the world. But nevertheless, they're not going to, they're not gonna be held hostage to this whiplash of chaos. And they're, they're, they're going on with their plans and their lives.

And that includes not dealing with, or, you know, relying on us for as little as possible. But great and, and good for my Canadian friends, but we got 330 million people here who, you know, probably, I don't know, 280 of them, 280 million of them have phones or, you know, we rely on computers and, you know, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's a scary thing. It's a scary thing.

Well, you know, I, I think one of the things that I am, have to remind myself of with this administration is if we're waiting for answers this afternoon or, or Thursday or whatever day on whatever tariff question that, that's one answer. A it's gonna change anyway. It's gonna change.

Everything's subject to change because it's, it's fly by, by instinct. But, but this isn't a, a, this is isn't a rogue wave. This is, you know, square waves that are all hitting at once.

And it's gonna be a continual like this. We're gonna, we're gonna be in this rollercoaster for I think a long time. Because, you know, when you change a system, it's one thing to say, we would like to move it all on shore.

How do we do that? What are the incentives? What are the things that we, we try to direct the market to do, uh, to have that happen?

Or where do we invest to help make that happen? We're not doing that. What we're doing is putting the brakes on everything, saying, stop.

We're not gonna do what we're doing right now, but what are we gonna do? Well, we don't know yet. So that, that's the disruption.

It's the not just hitting the brakes, it's the waiting for answers. Right. So how many times did you sit outside that executive room waiting for answers only to find out once you got in it, they were bozos anyway.

You were stupid for waiting. What was I thinking? Right.

And, and we're in the same place here. It's, it's, the answers about chips and whatever, that's not gonna solve anything. All it's gonna do is let us sell itself some products for a while until they change their mind.

And somebody, this is off Trump or some other person. Yeah, I was just gonna, sorry. Oh, no, I was just thinking about something that I think, um, when it comes to the phones and the laptops with the uncertainty might encourage a little more sustainable behavior where people are going to say, well, maybe I can keep this longer refurbish it.

Um, maybe it's not worth it to spend the money. I'll, I'll be watching that to see if circularity levels go up, just because of the uncertainty and perhaps price prices going up. Could be.

Mm-hmm. I thought you were gonna say that tariffs are like the weather. Wait a minute and it'll Change.

That's right. That's the weather in New England that we used to say that. Yeah.

Yeah. It, it, it, you know, the other thing though is, uh, assume, you know, in a Solomon like way, they cut the baby in half here and they do come up with some tariff schema for electronics. Well, that's gonna really be a tax on businesses, right?

Because how Nick think of a business that doesn't use a computer today. And you know what, right? I mean, that as that works its way into a system.

You know, I shudder to think what, you know, e even a relatively minor, a modest tax on these electronics, I think will, will. Uh, and, and then the question is how much of, how much of a tariff do you need to, to go the right behavior that you're looking for, which is investment here in, in the US now, uh, project, what's it called? Not Starlight.

What's the $500 billion Stargate, Stargate and all this money? I mean, what happened to all of those things? Why, again, why can't we just build better stuff here?

Do we, is the only way to do, you know, and I was never a Ronald Reagan fan, let me say that right here. Publicly. I wasn't.

I I, I was, I was a political science major, and I never bought into the whole Reagan economic. Well, that explains a lot. Um, but that being said, the cornerstone of that.

But I was from New York where we had a pretty good Republican named Rockefeller, who knew a thing or two about economics, nothing about drug laws. Unfortunately, a lot of people rotted their lives away in jail. But, but the, the cornerstone of that was you need a level playing field.

If there's a level playing field, let the chips fall where they may, no, no pun intended here. Um, let the chips fall where they may. And that's what I'd like to see is let the Chips fall.

So let's talk about what does a level playing field look like? I mean, I don't know. I'm, I'm not, I'm not privy.

I'm, I don't know, international trade, But what I'm doing Well, China has real barriers. What? Yeah, exactly.

And what I do, and so does India. Now, India's put up barriers too, in a lot of different areas. Some that impact the middle America and some that impact companies or whatever.

But, you know, if you wanted to do business, you know, this is why NetApp, one of the clients that I've worked with a lot, has a deal with Lenovo, and they cut that deal with Lenovo to sell some of their products. Part of that deal is so they can sell over in China. That's, and the same stuff we saw having, what was, what was, you know, Huawei did some several kind of things in the past.

I mean, we are do, do all kinds of workarounds to make this Happen. Well, it's unnatural acts Kim. It's unnatural acts.

So what you're, you're looking at, maybe take this idea on, is that when you're negotiating a contract from the beginning, you don't want, wanna walk in the door with half the contract already negotiated because you've lost some of your negotiation pulls. So what my perception of this is, is that they've taken the entire concept contract, if you will, which is trade, and threw everything on the table and said, you're gonna come to the table and we're gonna talk about everything all at one time, and then we're gonna piece apart whatever pieces. That is one philosophy that is put forth about what is going on here.

And by doing that, I bring whoever I'm negotiating with fully to the table, I'm negotiating the full contract. And if, you know, you've been through the, you've been through selling your company, you know, easily what happens is that you agree upon something, something changes. And that's negative to you, is kind of like the best thing to do is kind of start all over again, you know?

And, and don't let them parse and piecemeal you apart. And that's what I kind of think might be happening. Although, I don't know, and I am not an economist, and I'm not sitting there in the congress department.

Well, I do think that is what's happened, Kimberly. I think it's a good description of it, and you'd have to add to it. And we're gonna put in penalties that make it very costly to do business until we figure this out.

That's another incentive. Well, until you lower barriers. But, but here's the thing.

You know, Tom Thomas Friedman's flat earth kind of series of books, capital flows to like, it's like fluid flows to the lowest level. And so it may be that the US never is a chip powerhouse. We may design them here, but not manufacturing.

But it's just, but we, but dawn, we sell good soy. We sell a lot of soybeans, and we make the best weapons by our weapons, right? That, that's what the global economy is.

You know, you buy, you buy chocolate from Switzerland, But you're trying to solve what, what what I see is going on. They're trying to solve a multilayer multidimensional problem, not layered, multidimensional. One is trade deficit, if that is really a problem.

Number two is the deficit of the country. Number three is cutting of middle America in jobs. And number four is supply chains.

And you left out the big one though. The, the thumb sergeant Holka the toe of this. Strategically, we wanna dominate the world.

We are America. And, and you know what? It's not just the us Don't, don't fool yourself.

China wants to as well. Well, we don't wanna lose our power. I mean, I'm sorry, the, the entire right side of my screen is not talking.

I'm Sorry, because the Canadians, they don't play that power game. But, but, but make no mistake, the, the Chinese us wrestle for dominance is real. But my, but my point is, when you blow things up and then you put barriers for anything to happen, until you have the new thing in place, the new contract in place, guess what?

Nothing happens. People don't buy, people don't continue that contract that, uh, you signed with that supplier over in India, nice contract. You got there.

Hope nobody does anything to it. Whoops. We just did.

In effect. We blew it up. We blew up that.

So it's the insanity of this, and I get it. Yes. If you want the ultimate leverage, I guess the problem is that, uh, the peasants suffer while you're About, well, let eat cake, let them meet cake.

Someone once said that, didn't they? Without losing their head? Uh, they lost their head.

They did lose their head. Yeah. All right.

And that's, you know, we want, we wanna connect business in the meantime. And that's, that's the question. It was like, wonder what terms are Well, and look, to be fair, you speak to India and some of these other countries and they'll say, look, it's not all about, when we talk about trade, it's not all about goods.

How much American services get sold into these economies? And how much of our economy is based on the export of American services. It's, it is a thorny, complicated issue.

And the problem is thorny complicated questions don't usually have simple answers. Mm-hmm. But yet, we're a society that yearns for simple answers.

Anyway, let, we've gone over on this block. Yeah, let's come back. We're gonna talk about Microsoft Recall the Time machine.

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And my best, Arnold Schwarz, Inga, I'll be back. Well, it seems like, uh, Microsoft is back with plans for recall. For those of you who may not be familiar with Microsoft Recall, it's, it's one of these great ideas, but the security and every other implication of it is a monster.

Chris, what's going on here? Well, you know, I think on the last block, right? You know, the, the continuation of that conversation is that right?

You know, we want, this is like the agent of ai, you know, conversation we had a couple episodes ago, right? You know, I want these things. What does it take to get that?

And in this case, you know, I want my technology to remember what the heck I was doing with it, and to remind me and not make me waste my time searching for the, and that, that implies all sorts of security and privacy things. You know, who is actually keeping track of that, right? And like, like the, uh, the announcement about Amazon and Alexa, right?

All processing is gonna be in the cloud. Let's break this down from a security perspective. I never trusted this little thing anyways.

Right? You know, so whether it's processing it here or having the cloud makes no difference from a security and private privacy perspective. I assume someone's listening right now and somebody I don't want listening, but I don't care, right?

I factored that into my, all my risk profile and it's just a thing. And so this, uh, announcement, you know, crisis to have this conversation as a security person, yes, we can have this and we can have the security and privacy levels that we want if we enunciate them. And if we buy, you know, two of those and so forth, those technologies and capabilities exist to make this no worse than, you know, the 9,000 other threats that, that, you know, like, like Nats and Spring, you know, float around us everywhere we go, right?

That's not the big problem. The big problem is that we have not fought those things through, you know, in our privacy and security and the information we share with the everything, you know, social media platforms and big companies isn't secure. It isn't private.

You should have no expectations that it is, you know, can we keep escalating down that path without, at some point, putting in the controls so that I can know to this topic, you know, has anybody been else been, look, you know, uh, authorized or un unauthorized? And looking at my history of all the things that I've been doing that's being hosted in Microsoft, Rico, um, or not, and how this connects to tariffs and international trade and everything else, is that it's all about efficiency, right? You know, uh, um, this is, you know, as you were saying, there's a biology to this, to economics.

Um, it flows to, you know, it, it follows the nutrient ingredients. You know, I believe very strongly the way to address those sorts of privacy concerns is actually more efficient and more effective and takes less energy and costs less money for everyone involved to, to adopt from the consumer perspective, to build from the provider per perspective and provide more predictable, uh, stable revenue streams function. You know, you can build around that sort of thing, you know?

But we've, we've accepted this level of uncertainty. It's getting to a point where, yeah, people actually think that you were, you know, you out there and listeners, you really believe that, that, you know, the devices around you aren't listening, listening. They are.

And don't say you should worry about it. But, you know, as such, you know, they're not necessarily gonna come down, uh, outta the black helicopters. But, you know, current political environments, even in the US make even those sort of James bond's concerns kind of practical.

Well, I think we went right for dessert, you know, since we talked about let the meat cake last segment, um, total recall and refer back to another Schwarzenegger reference recall was kind of going for the dessert. I'd like AI to just tell me, look at everything that's going on in my digital environment and my computer, and then be able to recall, go grab that stuff, go back and look, pull it up, search it, whatever it might be. And, and I think that's a laudable thing.

I mean, how handy would that be? Very handy. I'd love to have that now.

So we went right to that solution without really thinking about the security implications. And that's what caused the big hell of Baloo appropriately. So like, wait a minute.

Uh, and, and the question is now is it damaged enough that people are gonna be, yeah, that that's kind of a, a bad thing. I'm, I'm gonna avoid going down that path. Or it gets turned on.

They don't know about it. So they, they're using it anyway. Uh, 'cause it wasn't suddenly that everybody got security and privacy conscious about ai.

No, we still use a lot of AI and give away a lot of information that we shouldn't. So I, I, I'm curious to see, I don't know if the brand was damaged. 'cause I don't think it was, it was distributed widely enough to really make a difference, maybe in the corporate environment.

Um, certainly not in the, in the consumer, but, we'll, we'll see. We'll see what happens. So the question I have is, why did they recall it?

Recall again, what's the, what's the issue there that they just, like, they needed to do something and what did they discover? If, Do you, do you wanna do it? Chris?

You want Go ahead. I would love to think, you know, that it really was a security and privacy thing, right? Because, 'cause I agree, you know, with Mitch, right?

You know that I'm always looking for the driver, what will push the, the consumer opinion to the point that providers have to respond and do the kind of things that I, as a security engineer would like to see done. And yeah. 'cause I want this functionality.

Uh, do I trust the vendors? No. I mean, you know, and I am one, you know, so it's, it's, you know, so I have to have compensating controls that again, are expensive and cause me to do or not do things that if I didn't have to do that, I could just move forward and, and use things.

So, if I remember right, ly, the, the, the recall takes a, a screenshot snapshot of your screen every, it's like the Apple time machine. Yes. Or the internet time machine.

It turned all these images of what's, what you're working on, what, what, what content you're working on. But it put it into a DA local database. And I believe it was a little, uh, like a SQL light database or something, but it wasn't encrypted or secured.

So it was like, if somebody got access to that, yeah, they've got everything you've done and, and all the stuff on your computer too. So it was just sort of like, I think the security group was, you know, on, they were at President's Club that week or something when they went through there. Are we ready to launch?

Or somebody just said, yeah, I don't think we need to talk to security. Let's just get this thing out in the market. Yeah.

I mean, I, I look at this and think if I am a, um, corporate lawyer and would I even allow this thing to be turned on in my company? Yeah. And the reason, Read your records retention policy, talk About records retention now.

Um, and, um, you know, we've now have created, I mean, I can't imagine the snapshotting of all the images and how much data that's going to create and how, how big that's going to get on. Yes, we've got 122 terabyte drives now. Okay, thank you very much.

But still, you are snapshotting images and images are bigger than data, you know, than, than zeros and ones kind of data. And, um, and the legality of it, I'm like going, whoa. I mean, talk about discovery.

Drop that into an AI model and do a little bit of discovery for a legal, you know, liability kind of thing. Make sure FBI investigation, that never stops. So let me, let me take the other side of this coin, if I may.

Isn't everything we do on computers logged and stored anyway, just about number one. Number two, look is someone who, who always could, could use a little recall and reminders every now and then as I get older. It's a nice feature.

But here's a fundamental thing I learned about security 30 years ago, and it's as true today as it was that security's not the barking dog or the, the mouth of the dog. Security is the tale of the dog always has been. Right?

And if this feature is so good, so in demand, so useful, the attitude of the corporate overlords will be, we'll make it work. We'll find a way, we'll get some minimum security and privacy. We'll address those privacy concerns.

You know, again, I've told this story before. I remember doing a podcast with the, uh, CEOs of, um, Mongo DB and Couchbase 15 years ago. You know, this is when no SQL databases were fairly new still, but very popular.

And I asked them, I said, Hey, a lot of people say, no, SQL stands for no security. What are you guys gonna do about security? I said, well build security in when our customers demand security.

But right now they want no sql, easy unstructured data and, and databases that work in that. And they were making, you know, buku bucks as they say back then. Um, so it's the same thing, Chris, You know, it, it's, you know, let me be clear.

You know, there is a point in the future where we will be able to do all these things. I mean, all these things, you know, to this point, you know, that we will all be able to sit here knowing that should we want to, we can check to see all of our history information and, you know, logging and everything else, everything about us and where it is and who's touched and where it's been. We can't do that now.

Um, but, and again, is this, these issues, and again, even the taring issues, this, you know, it is all supply chain. If I can have visibility into my supply chain that I need for security perspective, just for software, supply chain security, this whole software bill of material things, then intrinsically, I also have that same capability to have the visibility into all these economic issues. You know, where are things actually coming from?

'cause we don't, it takes too long to figure that out now. But these capabilities have these technologies, you know, specifically things that can be implemented, that could be legislated, that could be regulated. You know, we have all the pieces to put these systems in place to achieve individual purposes that are getting closer to the, the present in, in software supply chain, uh, security.

We're looking at individual sectors that perhaps in the next couple years, during this decade, may have the right drivers and economics to be able to implement the kind of utopian software, supply chain security that, that we will need, have to have at some point to keep critical things running. So if we're a couple years away from that, then those same sort of technologies can be bolted onto all these other things. You know, the security and privacy of the data, right?

About me, is a supply chain issue, right? The costs in Tiffs and economic, you know, you know how that's a supply chain issue. So we're approaching these different problems for the similar reasons and from different directions.

So my real question is not if these things ever come to pass, like, do they come to pass in my lifetime or in this decade or this year or next year? You know, again, I, I think the louder the, the squealing, the squeaky wheel gets, gets the grease. So if this, if, if recall is really such a, uh, in demand feature is such a, you know, compelling product, and the, and the privacy folks squeak loud enough, they'll grease it, they'll figure it out.

And if they don't, they won't. You know, it, it's an age. This is, this is marketed play.

Is, is this product a killer product that we're gonna tell the lawyers and the privacy people shut up? Or here, here's, here's some minimally viable, you know, uh, things we're doing to address your concerns. But this is going forward, that train's left the station.

I, you know, it's just the way, the way of the world. And as a security person, you'll learn this. Chris, you've learned it, Mitchell, I know you've learned it, right?

So you're saying we should create a new term, minimally secured product. Is that what we have? Maybe that's What we always have, But yeah, I, I think that's pretty much the status quo, but Which, which is fine.

Right? You know, we, we worry too much. Yeah.

This is actually working right now. You know, the internet is a patch job of oh my god, you know, look under the hood, but it keeps working. Exactly.

You know, and it's a minimally secure product. I I i's how I feel about it. But It could be more secure.

We would do less with it because we would've spend more time on that Risk management baby. All right. Hey, let's take minimal Privacy product too.

MPP and pp. I like that one. M, MSP and mpp.

There You go. All right, you, Camberley Bates has that ip. Put it here first use.

All right. Um, we're gonna take a break here on Text and gang. We're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about AI sustainability and avatars.

You're, oh my, yeah. com is the leading resource for news analysis and education on challenges facing the cybersecurity industry. com covers all aspects of cybersecurity, including data security, DevSecOps, cloud security, application security, network security, security threats, and more.

com has the largest selection of security content featuring breaking news, blog posts, podcasts, and more. com to learn more. com.

Home of Security Bloggers network. Welcome back to the Techstrong Gang. Well, recently I was at Emer Americas, and I spoke to so many people.

I have one more left to share with you. This is Matthew Chira, who is the CEO of Profits of ai. And when I first talked to him, I thought, okay, is he the prophet?

No, he's not. He, he just represents a lot of them. So he's really seen the trends and the momentum of what people are talking about all over the, the country and globally, um, not just this event in South Florida.

And he mentioned ag, agentic, AI avatars, and sustainability. So here's a look at that interview. Hi everyone.

I'm here at Emer Americas in Miami. And joining me now is Matthew Shira, who is the CEO of profits of ai. Matthew, it's great to have you on.

Oh, Thank you so much for having me. Obviously AI is a big track at this conference. What do you think of it so far?

What do you think of what you've seen and what, tell me a little bit about yourself as well. I have been nothing but inspired, uh, coming to just, like, every year that I come to emerge. So, So how do you become the prophet of ai?

Uh, I'm not the prophet of ai. Uh, I represent the prophets. Ah, yeah.

Uh, these are individuals who have had vast experience within the artificial intelligence industry. What do you do exactly with all these expertise in ai? I facilitate conversations around the world with businesses, with companies, with conferences, like emerge on what this technology looks like for the future, a Sustainability standpoint.

Obviously, that's a big part of the conversation with energy use. Yes. So, since you're in touch with all the thought leaders, tell me what you're hearing Quite a number of different initiatives going on right now and pioneered by some, uh, remarkable individuals.

Artificial intelligence is being used to solve some of the long standing problems in the sustainability space. The last couple years have been dominated by, of course, uh, generative ai. And that all the, like, wonderful things that have happened since then.

I mean, we can think back to the, to the original, uh, generative AI image of Will Smith eating spaghetti. Right? And just over the course of, uh, of, of a few short years, like the, the capability has just absolutely skyrocketed.

So constantly, people are wondering, you know, what's next? Now we've seen like such incredible advances, like what, where can we possibly go from here? And, um, and from what I've seen, it's, uh, a gentech AI that's gonna definitely be dominating a lot of conversations around the world.

So one of the most, uh, compelling use cases I, I have seen is when you start to combine a gentech ai, uh, technology with virtual avatars, right? So these are entities in which you can interact with a virtual avatar of some sort of your own custom design, or someone that inspires you or yourself even, and issue commands. And then this technology can go off and, and do a, a whole sorts of things.

And it just makes that process so much more natural. Like we communicate our thoughts and everything much more clearly when we, when we are talking to something that looks like us. And that's, and that kind of goes back and is connected to my role at Hanson Robotics, where, where I, uh, range appearances for the world's most famous humanoid robot, Sophia.

So I'm constantly, oh my gosh, talking about That. AI and robots. Yeah.

Yeah. Humanoid robots specifically. That's a whole other conversation.

Yeah. So when it comes to ai, a lot of people do have fear of it. Is it going to replace their job?

Is it gonna do things that are unethical? What is your answer to these kind of questions? Oh, yeah, sure.

Um, will it replace jobs? Absolutely. It's already well underway.

I mean, there are a number of different instances in which we can already see this happening, unfortunately. But there is a tremendous opportunity also that opens up for people to learn new skills, right? And to get much more acquainted with AI tools, right?

Because on resumes in the future, the things that employers are going to look at is not necessarily your degrees and what schools you went to, but the number of AI tools in which you're familiar with that, because all of these companies are gonna be having to draw on these in order to enable business function. Since You're with the profits of ai, I'm wondering what have you seen in terms of growth and demand? It must be surging right now.

There's so many things that artificial intelligence touches on that is critically important to engage in, like really thoughtful conversation about how we conceptualize this technology, what it means for society. And that's what I've dedicated my life towards, is, uh, ensuring that people have a direct access route towards the most capable minds in the field to help answer these longstanding questions. I'm Sure there's gonna be many more questions as things go on.

Matthew Truro, thank you so much for joining me. Of course. Thank you so much, Bonnie.

Alright, Well, we're gonna talk more about AI and quantum computing coming up. Sustainability, of course, was, uh, top of mind when I was speaking with Matthew about energy use and ai, but he really went to a place with robotics and avatars, kind of a little preview of what people will be talking about in the future. But one thing I thought was interesting is the first trend that he mentioned was something that Alan had told me in an interview, agen ai, right?

Well, Gentech AI is certainly the, the, the man of the moment, or the, or the AI of the moment, rather, uh, you know, getting bigger, even the general generative ai. But I'll tell you the truth, I get real excited about this physical ai is that, is that the right term guys? Right?

That's what we call the robotics and stuff. Mm-hmm. Physical ai, I, you know, I can't wait to go buy a real robot to open.

That happens soon. Yeah. Um, but it, but it is interesting and, and, um, you know, again, we talked about whiplash with tariffs and public policy.

Haven't we all been getting a little AI whiplash lately? Right? Agentic ai, it's gonna rule the world.

Well, a ai it's taking your job. Well, maybe not. You know, where, where's the hype end and the reality bite here is, is, Well, I think we're definitely still in the hype cycle.

Um, what we're waiting for is okay, making it real, right? You're waiting for the physical AI robot. I just got back from, uh, Google Cloud next.

And just as an example of where we are, right? They, they, uh, delivered or, or made available an open source framework for agent development. It's called agent development kit, like S-D-K-A-D-K.

Um, and, and the things in it are kind of understandable. It'd be like, how do you talk to multiple LLMs and how do that through a systematic way instead of building it every time? Um, how do you have multiple agents and how do they coordinate?

How do you have subtask within agents? Not, not anything that's earth shattering, but it's still kind of the basics, the core of developing this technology. So it's, it's still early and that's why, you know, we move from chatbots onto the next thing, but the next thing, it seems like it's only here partially, right?

We can do some things with the technologies we get from whoever Salesforce or, or Google or, or Microsoft. But there's more to come 'cause we need the technology to be able to do it. So I think we're kind of building that plane still while we're flying.

Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll make a, I'll make a guess, right? Because I think this is, this is safe enough.

I think the rest of this decade in the next five years, we'll, you know, we'll, we'll see this so clearly, right? You know, 'cause we have a certain amount of AI robotics stuff. I mean, Roomba and so forth is out there.

We've all seen one, maybe even had one and so forth. We certainly know somebody who's got one and they're okay and they're fine. And they've actually been around quite a while.

And it's kind of like the, the, you know, voice assistant, right? You know, Alexa keeps surprising me that it's actually been around as long as it has and it's gotten to the point where it's just awful. It's like the first version of the commercial skateboard or whatnot, right?

By the time you actually start building with like, bearings at all or much less good bearings and so forth, you know, the first steps just seems really quaint, but it worked. And in the, in the, you look around the spaces, you know, so yabo in landscaping, robotic, um, uh, mowing equipment that's pretty established for a couple years in already, right? Last summer we built some here, you know, for fun, just playing around with, with rasberry pies.

Anybody can do that. You know, so the, the combination of the, you know, off the shelf backyard, you can start a company right now, order things off online and build your own robotic thing for market segment. That'll just keep happening.

And in combination with, with again, all the other things we're, we're talking about how our concerns is we don't want them, you know, with, with, it's one thing to be vacuuming. It's another thing to have, you know, sharp blades and, you know, marching around our, our spaces. So it raises the same security and privacy concerns we have with everything else.

So we can do it. The economic drivers, I think are enough. And I think five years, we'll, we'll change the way we look about robots in our, in our daily lives.

One, one thing I wanna mention though is it, it's in the blurb here, and you, you spoke about it was emerging ethical concerns. Mm-hmm. Do we still have emerging ethical con we have ethical concerns at all ards, or have our ethics gone out the window in, in pursuit of profit?

And that's with an f um, Ish, right? The fact that we keep talking about it, and again, I have my concerns No, no sense beating it all to death, but Right. I think, uh, I think what we, what we quite often, and again, security guy talking with security people come to something and say, before we start, we need all of these locks and gauges and we never do.

Right? And eventually we finally backpedal and, you know, reverse engineer them back into place to the, as we was saying earlier, an acceptable security level. Um, our, no, we all Remember that letter signed by a hundred influential smart people, including Elon Musk, very prominent, like a John Hancock signature on it.

We gotta slow down, we gotta put the brakes on. The ethical concerns here that went out the window, that went out the window. I, I trust people.

I, I, and I know, not maybe a little bit naive here, but you know, our, our, our ethical behavior we carry out in our daily lives. And again, and, you know, not to turn this into a, a political show, right? Yeah.

I, I'm concerned with individuals And scale that trades left the station too, Chris. It's okay. Right?

I mean, le less to do with legislation and technology and so forth. More to do with, you know, how we're moving that little, little notch. I don't think we move it dramatically, but a little bits d you know, change when you take large populations and we're a little bit less ethical and spending a little bit less time thinking about it, it causes bigger problems.

Yes, there'll be ethical problems and yes, we will reel them in. I mean, it's just the nature of every technology that we've developed has been used by a couple of fringe industries, if you will. And, um, you know, whether or not, you know, the sex trafficking one has always figured out how to exploit whatever technology you put out there.

The drug industry has figured out how to exploit whatever technology. I mean, they're innovators, you know, just because does not mean that you're not an innovator, But no, being an innovator doesn't mean you have any ethics. So you're a good person even.

Um, anyway, Bonnie, thanks for a great report on that. Sure. Though, it sounded, I mean, overall I haven't had a chance really to talk to you about the, uh, the show down in Miami.

Yeah, it was an amazing, it Really was. I got a lot out of it and I, I learned a lot and met a lot of fascinating people. com.

There we go. All right. Hey, let's wrap it up.

We'll be back tomorrow, Wednesday. Who knows what'll be ha happening by then, Kimberly, great seeing you, Mitch, as always. Fantastic Chris, enjoy that spring weather up north in the great Northland.

Um, remind you all, we have a full text drunk tv, uh, schedule immediately following us today. So check that out. And until then, there's Alan Shimel.

We're outta here.