Techstrong Gang – February 27, 2025

Ladies and gentlemen in this corner, the Once and Future Champion of ai, IBM, you're watching Textron Gang. Hey, everyone. Happy, uh, Thursday to you.

It's been a crazy week. It's Thursday already. I I just, it's flying by.

So much news. So much going on. The, the chaos just keeps spinning round and round.

Um, but we've got a lot to go over today. I teased it a little bit upfront, uh, big news from IBM in, in the AI space, but I don't know how much of it, well, there's a lot of it. That's ai, but there's more to it than ai.

But we're going to get into that. We've got that, we've got Google what's going on with them and, uh, some things. And then we, we, interestingly, we, we, we found some people with a conscience in the, uh, department of Government efficiency.

I thought they, they purged all those people. But anyway, let's first introduce our panel. Who's gonna discuss these matters today?

I'm gonna start off out west, uh, with our Silicon Valley. I in the sky. Jon Swartz.

John, how are you? I'm doing well. I'm, uh, it's a crazy news cycle as you just mentioned, Alan, so we're just trying to keep our head above water.

All, all one. I think a lot of people are in that boat, John. Yep.

Just trying, not just tech. Yes. Yep.

Trying to keep your head above water. Moving from there, I guess we'll go down to Austin, Texas, where preparations are underway for South by Southwest. We hear it's our own and a whole award and good to have you.

How's everything? Always a pleasure. It's wonderful, beautiful sunny weather here.

Couldn't be happier with that. And preparations are well underway for South by Southwest. Be You've been exercising your Liver.

It be a good one. It's gonna be a good one. Sorry, I said, have you been exercising your liver?

I, I need to find another one. I need to get a donor probably by the end of the week, but It'll be a good time. Good for you.

Moving up to you. Uh, Ohio, where she's back from, her recent trip to New York. She's our editor for Textron ai, gestalt it and more coming down the pike.

Sulagna Saha Saha. Hi Sagner, how are you? Hi, Ellen.

I'm good, thank you. Good. It's great to have you.

Great, thank you. Uh, yeah. Okay.

And then finally the Dean of Harrison, our chief content Officer, Mike Vizard. How are you? Dean Harrison is in Westchester County, otherwise known as the central of all things IBM, because well just about everybody here who's in I Tech seems to work for IBM.

Yes. The old Armon. So our Armonk isn't Westchester, is it?

It's it's one county North Putnam, but, uh, well actually Armon is in Westchester. It's, um, I forgot the other town. They used to be where they had the big pyramid building that they abandoned a couple years ago.

Hmm. Okay. I always thought it was Putnam, but could be.

Yeah, I mean, certainly, I mean, here look down here in Boco is a big IBM town too, right. Once five. They Have a huge office in presence in Austin as well.

Yeah. And San Jose, California, they had the Coddle Road, uh, labs where my dad worked for 20 years. Yeah.

I mean, they look, they're IBM They're everywhere. Yeah. They Were for more than a hundred years.

Um, but some big news out of IBM Mike, why don't you kick us off with this? All right, let's jump in here At IBM bought Data stacks, which originally cut its name on this, uh, open source Cassandra NoSQL database. It was more of a higher performance database than your average document database.

And it got a solid following. And then data stacks extended its reach into vectors and their ability to use that as a foundation for training, uh, models. And then they also built a, um, a more elegant alternative to lang chain, which you can use for training the models.

And it's one of the lang chain being widely used open source tool, but it's a little cumbersome. So DataStax has this alternative, John, you wrote this story, but what are they saying in the Valley about all this? Because you know, here at one point IBM was supposed to be, you know, the next overlord, right.

And Watson in jeopardy. And then, uh, suddenly they were chasing everybody. I think the same, and I think the same applies to Silicon Valley.

They're almost an, I mean, I hate to say this, given the presence that I just mentioned that they had in San Jose for so long, they were the tech company here. They're an afterthought in the valley. They're rarely talked about.

Um, they have a presence, but it's tucked up in the hills in Northern San Jose. Um, in a sense, when we talk about the AI race, IBM is rarely mentioned here in the only references to Watson. Um, and that's from years ago.

So the, this idea that IBM is, is acquiring data stacks is interesting. I mean, it's a move by IBM to kind of turbocharge its Watson X portfolio and kind of make this, make the use of gen generative AI within enterprises kind of accelerate that. Um, it's, it's importance.

It's just, you know, Mike, it's here. It's so interesting the way things develop here. And this is not so much about IABM, but about just the perception of companies.

Here they are. The hot company for a few years, like IBM was then my Microsoft was the anti IBM, and then Google became the anti Microsoft. Apple was the anti-everything.

They, they have their runs. And I would even venture to say that a company like IBM is starting to get a little long in the two, excuse me. A company like Apple is starting to get long in the tooth and being considered kind of an older fuddy-duddy type of company versus the upstarts.

So the, unfortunately that's the culture here, the new shiny object. So the announcement by IBM is interesting. It will have an impact, I would assume, among some of the customers that already use data stacks and financial services.

But for the most part, it's kind of under the radar. Um, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a data grab, right? I mean, it's, it's the AI gold rush for data.

Um, I have nothing but good things to say about IBM because they were very good to me. I was in their futurist program for a very long time. They flew me around the world, uh, to just try products and tweet about it.

It was really fun. Um, but I think being cool in Silicon Valley is, is something that I used to care about and I don't anymore. It's very freeing.

But I mean, it's a, it's, it's essentially the future. You're living in the future when you live in Silicon Valley, and that means a lot of sacrifice to your day-to-day life. It also means that you're a startup or you're nothing.

And so I, I don't think that that's really necessarily a gauge of success. IBM has had the staying power, uh, uh, beyond any other tech company. And this just shows you how they plan to continue to evolve and survive.

We, You, you know, the one thing I was gonna mention too is the, um, the idea that Silicon Valley reminds me, you, you spark this man of Hollywood, you know, you're hot, you're in, and then you're discarded until you come back and do something again. So there are all sorts of companies and individuals who are the person of the moment who went away. So staying power is really important.

And I, you're right, IBM has been around for more than 110 years. I think I remember doing one of those a hundred year stories years ago. It's, it, it, it's, it's interesting.

But, and again, in the, in the big picture, the frame of things, this is kind of a small piece. I don't mean to undersell it, but I, that's basically a perception here at least. So, so go ahead, Mike, ahead.

No, Mike, you go. So the thing with IBM is they, they obsess about the monetization and rightfully so. But what happens is, is every time they do something new or interesting, or they acquire it, they shove it in this kit bag that they give to IBM consulting, who then goes down and visits all these enterprises and, you know, integrates all that stuff into these global 2000 companies.

And that's the business model. And so that's why every time they acquire something or they do something innovative, it just kind of falls by the wayside. Because when it comes to actually implementing it, there isn't really a push to build a platform and invite developers.

And I mean, they talk about doing that stuff, but they, on the execution side, they just blow it every time. 'cause they're kind of obsessed with being a consulting company at the end of the day. In fact, they, uh, just unveiled their AI integration consulting services, uh, around agent tech ai, which is supposed to help companies, uh, impact generative AI more safely and expedite the adoption just yesterday, I think.

Uh, but I feel like IBM may be onto something. I know they got leapfrogged a bunch of times, even though they were first really one of the first people in the AI race. Um, so I think with their, lately with their efforts around what's next, uh, their AI product portfolio and, uh, and the data stack acquisition.

And then, uh, with the data stack acquisition announcement, they also announced, uh, an agreement with the REA there, the new, uh, Saudi airline company that they're integrating what's next into their operations. And, uh, and with the upcoming MWC Barcelona in March, I hear that AI is going to be a big, uh, area of focus. Um, so IBM claims that their AI journey started back in, you know, uh, nine in the 1950s when the programmed the seven four mainframe computer with the, to play chess and wherever.

Um, but, um, really, and, uh, with IBMI feel like that this company has touched literally every milestone technology in the tech space for over a hundred years. Like punch cards, PCs, uh, mainframe. And, uh, I feel like they're more gearing up for the ai, uh, uh, revolution, uh, than before.

Um, like, uh, and like all big companies and that, that have skin in the game, the vision is to embed AI across the board, which may not necessarily be, uh, like, uh, the most, uh, distinctive strategy. But I feel like that, uh, they have done a few things lately, which shows that they are sort of, uh, going to be a part of the decidedly be a part of the ISI mean, we saw at Hot Chips last year, they announced, uh, that, uh, they were, uh, turbocharging the next generation of Sea Mainframe, uh, with the tellem two processor and, uh, spray accelerators. Um, and those chips are coming out this year, hopefully.

Um, yeah. So it appears that they are vying for, uh, the top, not the top spot maybe, but at least be in a shoulder to shoulder with, uh, the big companies that are in the AI race. So, let me weigh in here.

It is interesting, John, you know, public perception and not just Silicon Valley public perception, but broader public perception. But let's compare three companies. You've got IBM, which as you said, has about 110 years old.

You have Microsoft recently celebrated its 50th birthday. Apple is is about the same, isn't it? 50, yeah, 50 in April.

Yep. Apple is also 50. And let me just throw another one in for the, for grins and giggles.

Google, right? Google's probably, what about 2002? 2003, 2001, something like that.

Um, so let's say 25 years, half the age of the other two perception, Google is still perceived as an 800 pound gorilla controlling the markets. It plays in. And as an innovator, apple, apple is having an innovation problem, an innovation dilemma right now where the, the market is saying, where's the innovation?

We haven't really seen innovation since Steve Jobs passed away. Microsoft say what you want, but Satya Nadella has reenergized that company, and they are perceived, they, they were out in front with OpenAI. They, you know, that investment was probably the best 10 billion they ever put in.

Um, you know, and they, so they are, and they're, you know, second in cloud and all of these things. So even though they're 50 years old, they're, they, they've reinvented themselves a little bit. IBM as says punch cards, the birth of the pc.

The, the first time we started thinking of AI was real was Watson and the chess game and all of these things. They have a hundred year history of leading innovation. Uh, the, the power PC chip, they don't get enough credit for that.

When we look at what ARM is today and all of that, it, I mean, look what they did for, for, for those chips, the non-Intel chips, uh, mid-range, you know, mid frame, mid-range computers, mini computers, so many innovations that come out of there. Exotic materials, quantum computing, there's still a leader there. But the mo, the MO is their first with these things.

They're out ahead because they do plow money into r and d and give them credit, and they do buy and acquire a lot of companies give them credit. But somewhere along the way, as Mike says, those accomplishments go outta the hype cycle, not necessarily into the trial of disillusionment, but they, they level out and you don't see them. And part of it is because they're not necessarily, like Broadcom does this too.

They're not necessarily looking for new customers. They just want to go deeper into the customers they already have. And so the customers they already have say, Hey, do you have the IBM AI built into your stuff?

Yeah, I think so. My IBM guy put it in, or whatever, or, you know, they talked about it. So kudos to IBM for being able to kind of surf that wave all of these years.

But I think the key to their success is not necessarily surfing the fastest, the highest or the hardest. It's, it's staying right in the, you know, in the top, in the top right quadrant of the pack, but not necessarily in the lead. Now I do want to talk a second about data stacks though.

'cause I'm a startup guy. And let's give a big shout out to the data stacks people you want to talk about pivoting and reinventing yourself, right? These were a big data company with, with Cassandra, right?

No sequel database. Jumped on the Vector database bandwagon early on when, you know, companies, frankly like Mongo, that had a Vector database solution, didn't realize they what to do with it. And, and they went that route with the Vector database and then took it the next step.

And now they're being sold here as a, an AI company. You know, there's OpenAI, there's, there's, uh, you know, anthropic and data stacks. Where did they become an AI company?

But I'm sure they got anyone with Enough data as an AI company at this point. Exactly. Everybody's an AI company.

Like we're all AI engineers. So I didn't see what they paid for Data stacks. I don't know if any of you have.

Yeah, but I didn't like here, you know, on the grapevine or anything, but I'm sure it was a pretty penny. This wasn't a, uh, a fire sale. And, um, congratulations to the Data Stacks team.

That's what startup culture is all about. Good for you guys. Now we'll see what happens to them as part of Big Deal.

So The one thing I, I would add to that, and I remember having this conversation with IBM marketers and I was like, why don't you market these platforms and these technologies? And, and they explained it this way and they said, fundamentally, we're marketing IBM people and expertise and all the other things are enablers for that. And so, but they lead with all, you know, if you're here in New York, you can't go anywhere without running into an IBM ad.

But they're all the same. They're all about, you know, somebody at IBM has some expertise that you need, But I wonder how much NDL has changed that, You know, I was gonna mention, can I mention something that, that, that happened with Genie Remit? Gina Jeanie remit, um, just to give you an insight behind the curtains, when this company IBM was doing interesting things, as Mike said, they're almost treated like a consulting company out here.

And again, maybe it's because they're an, an East Coast based company that seems to have some sort of humility, which is lacking out here. But the one thing that was interesting was that Ginny Remit would always submit to USA today when I worked there as a tech editor, she would submit these columns to explain what they were doing because their marketing was kind of under, was kind of ho hum. And, and they had, they would tried to work out a sweetheart deal with our editor in chief to, to run some of her commentary.

And I would sometimes say, this is, you know, b******t. This is propaganda. We ran it more often than not.

But that gives you an idea. But that even they acknowledged that they weren't getting the message through. So ndl come back to that for a minute.

'cause it is significant, right? So when they spun out ndl, they really put all their like, tech support managed services stuff in there, but they kept IBM consulting with the main company, which allegedly is a quote unquote software company these days. 'cause it has higher valuations.

But, you know, point of fact is the route to market is still through those consultants. Fair enough. And Another another reason I feel like, uh, why it does not IBM does not come up as one of the most frequently named names, uh, at least in the AI conversation, is because, so they put like eight years behind Watson, but got eclipsed by Chad Gde.

And also a bigger reason is that their share prices did not move much. At least, uh, their AI revenue was not, you know, through the roof or anything. So that didn't get, No, they never figured out how to monetize Watson.

I remember being at IBM think 10, 12, 10 years ago, and they were showing me like dating AppSec built on Watson that would find you better dates and stuff like that. But they just think they did it. They, you know, they were out there and they, they kind of missed that one.

But, Hey, hey, one last thing on that. You know, who else we talk about a lot less these days? Who?

Red Hat. Red Hat who? Red Hat, who they've been, they've been, you know, bored.

We will be assimilated. They've been assimilated, they're now Red Hats who wear red ties with blue suits. Isn't that the uniform?

Um, anyway, hey, let's take a break. We're gonna come back. And you know what Google's done us wrong.

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And we're talking about a lawsuit actually involving Chegg, which is a publisher of medical information and they're suing Google over their AI summarization capabilities. And it's interesting, I'm not quite sure what the legal grounds are, but one of the claims that they're making is that this AI summarization capabilities hollowing out the internet and the knowledge thereof, because it's just summarizing everything. And if you watched a previous episode of Textron Gang, we talked about whether or not AI was making us all stupid.

And this is part of that kind of conversation. But the question then becomes, um, is this, Ann, we'll start with you, is this kind of shift here with these ai, uh, summarizations gonna ultimately wind up killing all the companies that create the content and then therefore we won't have anything on the internet that's worth looking at anyway. So, Well, great question.

I would argue that content creators were already under siege. Monetizing based purely on traffic has been a business model that's been failing for some time. I mean, you remember when people used to make money from ads, from banners, banner traffic, skyscraper ads, that, that's been leveled out.

Um, I think it's interesting because to me, as an SEO keep in mind this is what I do all day every day. It's not really that different from Google answers, Google answers, you know, where it asks a question and it answers it. The, this is sort of just a rehashing of that.

Um, but I think that the, the, the crux of the lawsuit is that Google is eroding the demand for original content, which I don't actually agree with. I I don't think that AI generated summaries necessarily reduce the need for people to read and want more information. Does it give them at a glance, does it give them a link?

Yes. Um, undermining publishers, publishers' abilities to compete was another point, which I think is probably a fair point to make because they are essentially taking snippets of it and benefiting from it. So I think that the perplexity model is a little more democratic, where they're brokering partnerships with New York Times and other big publishers and saying, Hey, let's, let's work out a financial arrangement.

Google doesn't really do that. Um, any arrangements they make with Twitter, LinkedIn, um, you know, these social media sites that they've done for years have all been sort of quiet partnerships, right? Uh, I like the fact that perplexity discloses, but you're talking about 120 million searches, uh, a month versus 130 billion, right?

So, so the economies of scale aren't there. Um, but the other argument was that they're creating a hollowed out information ecosystem basically, that it's gonna lead to a decline in quality and trustworthy information. Well, can we put that at Google's door?

It wasn't that happening anyway with disinformation and other things happening. Are they making it worse? Probably.

Um, I think that a lot of publishers are been outta shape because of the drop in traffic. Uh, but that could happen with an algorithm change that could happen with a lot of other things. It just so happens that AI has become a boogeyman for these sites because their business models are failing.

Are they justified? Probably. Um, I do think that we need to value free and fair press.

We need to value information and the ability to, to find good information. Do we want Google doing this for us? No.

But again, it's not that new. It feels new, but it's not, um, because of the Google answers that's been around for a long time, and this is just a sort of more prominent way of doing that. It's a little more at a glance.

You don't have to toggle it. Um, but I don't think anybody Knew where Google answers was. So that's, Yeah, Google answers are where you see it, it's question and then you click, yeah.

So 30 to 50% of searches at this point in time, and it, it varies based on the study you read, 30 to 50% have AI overviews, so this isn't even rolled out to all searches. So we have to think about what is the impact gonna be once that full rollout happens and it, and they're adding countries every month. Um, so what is that gonna do globally to information?

I don't know. But it's something that's being very closely watched and studied. And I don't think this is the last lawsuit we're gonna see.

I think we're gonna see even more of these because it, it's essentially taking co-opting information that is not theirs and presenting it as theirs is essentially, I think really, really not untrue. I think that they were fair in stating that. So let's cut the crop.

This isn't about AI per se. This is about the M word monopoly. Google has a strangle hold on, people searching for information on the internet.

And for the 25 plus years that they've been doing it, they did it in conjunction with most content publishers in the world, including Textron. Because in exchange for their being able to spider our sites and we want all of our information and we're gonna put it in as Google friendly a format as we can, and publish site maps and all of these things so that Google can get all of that. The quid pro quo there was then when people search certain terms that are germane to us, our sites would rank or would show up hopefully in the top three, if not the first page.

And people would come to these sites to consume that content and get that information. They didn't get the information per se at Google. They found out where to get the information from Google.

And so companies, publishers, like a tech strong and and similar were getting 75, 80, 80 5% of their traffic from what we called organic search Google Search. 'cause they rep represent 98% of the 99% of the market. Now starting with Google Answers, which was clunky and not as elegant maybe as the AI stuff is now Gemini, Google made a concerted effort to say, we don't wanna lose that traffic, we don't wanna send that traffic to other people's sites.

We wanna keep that traffic here so we can serve them ads so we could gather more information about them so we can do what we do to monetize these things. Right? And it, this didn't start with ai Anne, you're right.

We, we've seen a steady erosion of traffic from organic search for a couple years now. Um, but the quid pro quo is still there. Well, if you are not gonna send me traffic, don't use my information because you are now monetizing my information without my permission.

And the same way we're mad at OpenAI and we laugh at OpenAI talking about deep seek using open AI's information when OpenAI didn't pay for that information either. Well, I got news for you. Google didn't either.

I I would say Gen Z millennials, they're, they're less interested in using Google search. Um, You're right, TikTok and I Instagram, yeah, Yeah. The under 30 crowd is more statistically likely to search TikTok for local search than Google.

And that's because that experience is better. So there, there, the empire is crumbling a little bit, and this may be a move to counteract that. Uh, but they're still the giant, I mean, they're still the one that this book I wrote about SEO for O'Reilly is still, I mean, I say in the beginning, I hope it's not always about Google and that was 2017.

And yet here we are still talking about Google. So, so every action has an opposite reaction and everybody who creates content is gonna start putting up registration walls and putting up stuff to prevent you from getting to that content without actually going through then to get to it. And I, that's just gonna be the natural order of things.

'cause to Alan's point, the quid pro quo is gone. So no quid, the pro is gonna go somewhere else. If you're making money from your content, it is generally going to be from something other than just directly people viewing said content.

It's gonna be you talking about it on Instagram. It's gonna be you using affiliate links as an influencer. If you're a, you know, a a rogue person like me, I have a business, right?

I have an agency that I sell my services, right? So I'm not monetizing directly from content I put out there. So that model, I Dunno if that makes you rogue, Anne, that that's a harsh word.

Well, I've worked for myself for 15 years, so I, I guess that's pretty rogue. But, but the, the point is that making money from just putting out good content as an individual, as a small outfit, there's some concession you have to give, you have to do conferences, you have to do, you know, just making it on its own is not something that has been viable for a minute. And we can blame Google for that, I think to a large extent.

But, um, I don't know, can we put the all of the at their door? I don't know. Yeah, I it just seemed all Inev inev, um, go ahead, sag now.

Um, yeah, I was saying that it's really not new. 'cause every time Google changes its algorithm sites get pushed to the back pages, some even get indexed, and then there's this obvious drop in engagement and traffic. But, uh, what I think is really harting some of these publishing companies is the fact that, uh, with the Google over AI overview, so the, the key purpose of AI overview is to provide quick answers and save, uh, users browsing time.

And so that way com uh, users would just simply, uh, read, like, browse through whatever the AI summaries are and probably would not go to the page that actually has the original information. But to make matters worse, these answers are unverified and often inaccurate. We, we all remember the, the glue on pizza and Roday keeps a doctor away answers from last year.

And uh, yes, Google has done a series of changes. And, uh, to be fair, Google AI alone is not Jan. You know, Chad Chip wasn't that great either early on.

Uh, but the key issue here is that Google or o OpenAI or whatever company is doing AI search, they're harnessing publishers original content who, uh, which they put money and years into to create, uh, and to generate these summaries that are not even reliable. So that going forward is definitely going to be a problem. And, uh, that's probably what their point is.

Uh, the publishers who invite you to go Google in 2023. And, uh, there has been a slew of, uh, litigations lately based on, in and around this, uh, area. I absolutely, you're correct.

And I think if I could make a prediction here, I think, you know, the reason I always bring up perplexity is that it is time-based. It is reputation based. It's LLM plus index.

The future of search is not going to be indexed as Google has so heavily relied upon. And so this is a sort of clunky way that they're trying to essentially enter LLM into index and to mix them. And, and the mix isn't necessarily good, but I think the future of search is absolutely going to be, uh, coming from AI agents.

I think we're gonna see more and more search. I'm seeing search G-G-G-P-T, I'm seeing Bing show up in the top 10 and sites that I'm optimizing. That's never happened.

And that's exciting to me. So there, there's hope. No there isn't.

Plexity has just given me a citation. It doesn't drive any traffic to me. It's a very nice little salute as they drive by and steal my content.

So they're known better than anybody else just because they waved at me and said, thank you. They do chain of thought though. They do show you how they get to the conclusion, which is helpful.

You, you know, we talked about legacy, going back to IBM, we talked about legacy and the legacy of, of Google was always to not be like IBM and to do no evil. And as Alan mentioned earlier, the M word monopoly. I mean, this is no, not surprising what happened with the algorithm changes at the expense of content creators.

I mean, there's a duopoly between Google and Meta in terms of advertising, which is all but killed the fourth estate. So, you know, this is part of their leg, this is part of their legacy and it needs to be put out there. Uh, I'll tell you what I am looking forward to, that I will no longer have to care about.

It's called SEO Lot of time and effort spent on optimizing sites for Google traffic that I'm not, probably not gonna spend nearly as much time being worried about. If you're only thinking about Google, you've already lost Search everywhere. Searches.

Searches in everything we do on every platform we use. Spoken like a true SCO Rogue Warrior. Rogue, Warrior Warrior.

SEO, battlefield, TSEO, battlefield. Thank you, Anne. All right, let's take a break.

We're gonna come back and, and handle our third block today. Uh, some surprising resignations over at Doge. Is it Doge or Dog?

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Home of Security Bloggers Network. Hey folks, we're back in this. Alan alluded to, there are some conscientious objectors have emerged that dos, which I'm kind of surprised about.

I thought that they'd all been weeded out. But, uh, a couple of federal employees with technical expertise basically put out a joint letter saying that they would no longer quote unquote, participate in the dismantling of democracy in its services. Alan, I know we've talked about this subject in the past, but is this gonna be a larger trend?

Will other government agent employees kind of stand up and say, you know what, we're not doing this either, and maybe we're on the verge of something that feels like a general strike. I don't know. Viva La France.

Um, so first of all, I thought they checked that you can only have a Black heart if you worked at dots. You, you couldn't have a conscience. I guess not.

They must have inherited some legacy folks. They did. They did.

These, these people were, were already there as USDS employees and they had come from Amazon and Google. So I just wanted, can I just put that out there? Because these people are actually trying to do their job and they just got, they basically felt like they were forced out.

Yeah, I mean, look, we see what's going on here, guys, right? You, you don't use a blunt instrument where you need a scalpel. And so when you do things like that, the, the results are what the results are going be here.

And I do think it's only a matter of time. You know, I was reading an article today, you know, the governorship in Virginia is up for election this year in November, right? Lot of federal folks down in Virginia losing their jobs and feeling this pain.

Not that the governor of Virginia has done such a great job. What's his name? Len Kin or whatever.

Uh, I think we are gonna start seeing the manifestations of this chaos, of this dismantling of America, right? We're gonna start seeing when people start voting. Yeah, I would say that, uh, to give credit on the other side of that governor conversation, the governor of New York said she's excited that there's a bigger pool of talent to hire from.

And she's inviting all those doge people and laid off government workers to apply for jobs in the state of New York. Yeah, these were, uh, engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, they're talented people. Um, and they got thrown under the, the ages of, of Musk, who, you know, is the worst boss ever.

So, uh, more power to them, you know, they also were at reacting to, uh, layoffs of, of their peers. There were 40 layoffs just before that. And plus these individuals were being questioned about their political loyalties as part of their job, which is just absolutely absurd.

But then again, we are, we're used to this now It's almost esque, isn't it? So in a, in a lot of ways though, this kinda resembles how layoffs often get handled in private companies, right? What typically happens in a lot of organizations, especially the larger ones, is somebody comes up with a number and says, we're gonna cut 5%.

And then, you know, who gets cut is just generally Time out, not time out, time out. Don't, don't even go there. Don't go, this is not a 5% cut.

These are people doing searches looking for things like diversity or inclusion. And if it has that word in it, they cut you out. Whether it's 2%, 5% or 50% has nothing to do with that.

They are, they are. This is a political hit list kind of, uh, campaign here, right? Is, this is not your company wide, we gotta cut 10%.

They're, they're targeting specific enemy lists and specific kinds of programs that they deemed not in, in line with their worldview. Let, let's not, let's not give them the dignity of, of comparing it to something like that. This is a, this is a hack with a machete, right?

This is this. Yep. So This is a political cut that has To have no doubt about it.

Claiming is their number. Right? Right.

What take the, the USAID thing, you think there was a percentage they wanted to cut outta that? No, they think that we're done giving food to people and, and, and, you know, and they cover it by telling us it was all based on condoms for Palestine or whatever. Come on.

It's nonsense. It's nonsense. This is a political hatchet job.

And when the people wake up must, I Mean, he, go ahead. I'm sorry. John Musk's using The Yeah, Musk is using the same playbook that he did at Twitter, right?

He gets, gets rid of the people that he thinks are politically infused. Uh, he, but in this case, I, I sometimes think you give him too much credit. I think they're just blindly cutting like wild.

I mean, it's, it is precise in terms of certain people, but I also think they're not, this is just like a wild free for all and slashing, right? And I don't think they're putting a lot of thought, I forgot what agency it is, but they cut 'em one week and had to hire 'em back the next week. 'cause they figured, Oh no, there was nothing important.

It was just the nuclear engineers, no big deal. I Mean, they, they got, they got, they got so drunk with power that they, they've cut so many people that they realize, oh, wait a second, we can't run that operation now. And then you're seeing this in these town hall meetings.

It's just incredible pushback because services are being denied. But I mean, this is part and parcel of, of their crazy plan. And then they're not complying, you know, the, the courts are saying, no, you have to do these things and they're not doing it.

Look, I mean, there's 14 states pushing legislation to stop Elon and what he's doing. I don't know how successful they will be, but I expect after an attack, there will be a counter attack. This is America.

We're not gonna take this lying down. We're gonna fight for what we believe in. And, and yes, it's gross, and yes, it, it's undignified, but it's also part of the democratic process.

And I think democracy is going to see the greatest test seen, you know, since its inception. I, I really do. And, and I'm ready to fight for what I believe in.

You know, I'm not gonna just sit and read news and get mad. I'm gonna do something about it. I'm gonna lobby, I'm gonna, I'm gonna maybe even go to a demonstration.

I don't know, I'm kind of scared of public anything. So I, I was in New York get cut. I was in New York, I'm gonna do what I can Do.

Yeah, no, I was in New York this week and down Broadway and it was freezing out. But down Broadway came a demonstration of hundreds of people chanting, Hey, hey, ho ho, Eric Adams must go. Right?

And, and stopped the immigration. And because what happened there was a travesty. I, you know, I've had friends reach out to me and say, Hey, on Textron gangster, we talk about politics or politically charged subjects.

And I think we have adu and to your point, we have a duty to, because history shows us, if you sit back quietly and as you say, read the news, you're a collaborator at Nuremberg. The, I was following orders, defense didn't hold water. And I'm not saying these are Nazis, so we're not going there right now yet.

But you can't sit by quietly. You, if you are a patriot, you have a duty to speak up for what you believe in. John.

Oh, I don't think we have a choice, actually, because the people that we cover are part of this movement. They are part and parcel of aiding and vetting what's going on, and they are, uh, enriching themselves. And in the process, we don't have a choice.

We have to write about This has Its accurately. Yeah. Tech has its mitts all over this big tech does.

Oh my God. Yes. It's all the, the oligarchs are, are, you know, they're leading the, this, this anti revolution.

They're, they're, they're, they just engorging themselves, Right? So part of the issue though, and there was a good report on this in CBS news two days ago, and they went and they interviewed a bunch of folks in various small towns, and they were all convinced that, you know, the government was inefficient, it was wasteful, and they didn't have a lot of sympathy for these people being cut. So it wasn't something that they were riled up about.

And I have to wonder if part of that is maybe the government agencies just need to do a better job of explaining what they do to people so they understand and they value it. Because right Now, no, but you know what, Mike, this is the opposite of NIMBYs. Until it's in their backyard, they don't give a crap.

But when their daughter got fi gets laid off, or their, or their son all of a sudden can't go to school or, or their milk goes bad or their farms go bad in the field, then all of a sudden stuff hits the fan. Now what the heck's going on? Right?

That's, that's the nature of the beast until it hits home, it's always good to point to the next guy. Oh yeah. Those people are inefficient.

Is government inefficient? Yeah. Is it almost by design?

Yes. Is it the best of the worst form of government that we've ever had on this planet? Yes.

Right. And so you, you know, you, if you're okay throwing babies out with bath water, go ahead. Right?

But that's, that's what's going on here. So, and, and, and, you know, we'll, we shall see where the chips fall to Anne's point, right? This is still America, I think.

And I think we still Have democracy. We still have checks and balances. It does not in we're, I don't care what map they show you.

All of those people in those little towns don't equal all those people in cities and suburbs and so forth, where, where most of 80% of our population lives. And, and as a wise man once said, you know, you just throw stones, make sure that, that you're not living in that glass house because they'll come back the other way. I always, I have to think about what my late father used to always say in these situations, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

Yeah. Yes. All right.

But hey, more power to those conscientious folks who, who showed they do have a conscience and a heart and, and stood up for what's right. So we need more of that in America. Um, guys, if that's it, I think we're going to call a wrap on this version of the Textron Gang.

I can't wait to see what we talk about tomorrow. It's Friday. Um, and Sagner, John, Mike, thanks for joining me.

I'm Alan Shimel. You've just watched Textron Gang. Stay tuned.

We have a full text drunk TV schedule for you coming right up till then. We're out.