Techstrong Gang – February 4, 2025

Look Woody as far as the eye can see. It's the great American firewall you're watching. Text On Gang.

Hi everyone. Happy Tuesday. It's Alan Shimmel here for the Techstrong Gang.

You know, we're running, we're running lean, mean, and lean here on this Tuesday. I've just got two other gang members with me today as we've got a bunch of people flying and trains, planes and automobiles, but couldn't think of two better people to do this with. Let me first go to our steady Eddie in Hudson, Ohio.

He is the founder and, uh, president or CEO whatever. He's the man who breeds life into tech field day every day, and he is also a great gang member. Steven Foskett.

Steven, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm pretty good.

Um, I prefer galactic dictator. Uh, that would be a good title for me. We already have one of those, I thought.

Okay. Or, Or maybe shimmel understudy after last Week's activity. Yeah, that's right.

You know, I saw there was a little insert into the, uh, program for the gang, right? Tonight playing the role of Shimel is FoST. Um, funny stuff.

Stephen, welcome and thanks for being here. Um, joining. Steven and I live in our Boca Raton headquarters.

She's our sustainability Echo Insights, and she has a report coming out soon, but we'll talk more about that in the days and weeks ahead, our own. Bonnie Schneider. Hi, Bonnie.

How are you? I'm doing well, Alan. Thanks for having me.

And I'm looking forward to talking about that. We, We call that a tease. Yes, those good Tease.

Okay. Uh, so guys, let's just jump right into things here. You know, I led off with this great American firewall.

It's funny, uh, you know, a little bit of competition and all of a sudden everybody's putting up, not everybody, but a lot of folks even in Silicon Valley, where we, I would think we would know better are, are calling for the government to help them. And, you know, those are the nine most popular words, right? I'm from the government.

I'm here to help for government help in keeping out, uh, AI products, AI technologies that's not here in the us. And, you know, we want to keep out content, we want to keep out students, we wanna keep out, we wanna keep out a lot of people, a lot of ideas, a lot of technology keep out. Seems to be the key phrase here, Steven.

I don't know. Just these things never end well, but what do you think? Yeah, I think they, they don't end well.

Um, you know, walls have a tendency of trapping you in just as effectively or maybe more effectively than they do to trap people out. Uh, it's sort of a truism that, uh, you know, you're more likely to be stymied by your own lock than somebody else be stymied by it. But the interesting thing with regard specifically to AI is that the more that they've tried to track, track down on China's access to American technology around ai, the more that the, uh, Chinese researchers have figured out ways of getting around it, whether that's making the most of the H 800 and then the H 20, or whether it's figuring out, uh, optimizations for training.

And, uh, you know, I would say that the Biden administration's policies on toward China are the direct cause of deep seek mania that we lived through last week. And frankly, if there's more great, uh, controls, uh, placed on access to technology, it's likely that, uh, it will divide the industry even further. And we'll see China have even more, um, homegrown, uh, development technical developments.

Now, it is important to point out that their technical development is not entirely homegrown, as we've learned since the announcement of deeps seek it leveraged. Uh, it could not exist, not leverage. It literally could not have been done without literally all of the previous work of developing AI models and without literally using the AI models that had been exported.

So maybe if those had been controlled, they couldn't have done it, but I'm not really sure how well those controls might work. And frankly, uh, not to sound too much like a libertarian here, but maybe if we allowed more people more access to stuff and had a a, a more free market, it would prevent, uh, strange market distortions like we're seeing. Yeah, I think that's true as well.

I think also there can be more of a balance between, uh, protecting intellectual property and also, you know, maybe not the extreme, like Steven was saying, that with a wall there comes consequences. But, um, having a, a little more guidance when it comes to intellectual property theft, which tends to lead to this on a larger scale, uh, particularly from China, I think that's an important thing to note. Yep.

You know, Steven, a smart man I know once told me, when you build a wall like that, it tends, tends to keep you in and not stuff out. And I think that's what we are guilty of here. Um, look, we, we've discussed this in past gangs.

The irony of of, of open AI claiming deep seek used their, you know, scraped their information without permission from a company that scraped the internet and their entire being was used without permission is, is pretty ironic. But at the end of the day, I, I'm not necessarily a libertarian either, but, but Steven, I, I have to agree with you. I think this is a case where if you put it out there and we're all better off, we're all better off as humans as a result of it.

Now that being said, there's gotta be rules. There's gotta be rules you play by in terms of theft of IP and respecting ip. And, and certainly the Chinese over the years have been guilty of, of stealing IP and using it, whether it's espionage or, you know, state sponsored espionage or commercial espionage or just pure theft.

Mm-hmm. Um, and you need to put safeguards in place there. You need to deal with that.

I don't, you know, I'm not saying go put tariffs on them for it, but, um, but you need to, people need to respect the, the, the, the rules of the game and then let the winners come where they may be. Um, but I just think it is such a bad idea, such a bad idea to be thinking about building a, an American firewall where we're going try to keep others out, keep our technology to ourselves. It, it, you know, it, it just doesn't end well.

I'm sorry. Yeah. And I think it's contradicts the open source transparency.

It, it's almost like you wanna have it both ways. It, it Contradicts, you know, whether you agree with the libertarian philosophy or not, there is something to be said about the power of a free market to, to foster innovation. And, and you know, what you got here was a great example of, and, and I wrote this in an article two weeks already.

Now go, you know, necessity's the mother of invention. If you don't give people access to this, they'll figure out how to, you know, I'm reminded of Star Wars when Obiwan tells doth he could strike him down, but he'll be stronger than he ever was. And, and that's what you get here.

Let, let's not be Darth Vader. Yeah. We don't wanna be Darth Vader.

Yeah. And, and, you know, so, so earlier I was channeling the, the libertarian mindset. I don't wanna sound too protectionist, but I I can actually see a case to be made though that there should be controls on applications and access to, uh, certain applications.

I mean, you know, the flip side of a free market is that the government's role should be in interest in maintaining, uh, freedom and fairness in those markets. And so, for example, anti-dumping laws make a lot of sense. Like we shouldn't allow, uh, a, you know, AI model from some country to be introduced, um, with, uh, massive government subsidies or something so that it undercuts competition and cuts off competition.

We also shouldn't allow free access and, and, and, you know, no one, uh, not the Chinese, but not the Americans either should be breaking copyright controls and ignoring robots text and slurping up, uh, literally, uh, libraries full of copyrighted works in order to build their models. Nobody should be allowed to do that, because that breaks the free market too. I think that that's one of those things where people forget that, you know, with, with freedom comes responsibility.

I'm not Spider-Man's uncle, but, uh, you know, something like that. You know, if, if we're gonna have a free market, we also need to have very strong control, uh, and, and responsibility, uh, to make sure that we're actually, uh, playing fairly. A free market requires fairness.

And so in my mind, the government ultimately should be interested in promoting fairness and democracy and freedom along with promoting capitalism. And that's an issue with the new administration. They seem to be very interested in capitalism, but not very interested in promoting, uh, fairness in the market.

Agreed, agreed, agreed. Well, you know, and unfortunately, uh, you mentioned the, the Biden administration, Steven was, I think, very guilty of, of squeezing it so hard that they let the sand run through their fingers. That might be child's play compared to what we see over the next four years in this.

Um, and I, you know, I, I fear we are going to just be putting up walls. I mean, this, this is an administration who ran on walls, they Love walls, walls, tariffs, and are just financial walls. Yeah.

So, we'll, we'll hope for the best. Mm-hmm. I guess, and prepare for the worst as well.

Because the other thing is you put up a wall and you, you know, because you want to keep out, let's say in this case, China, well, what about some of our so-called allies or the, they were our allies. I don't know how much longer they'll be our allies, but, uh, you know, we need that global collaboration. We, you can't exist in isolation like this.

This is a lesson of history that, you know, and you don't learn the lessons of history you do to repeat them. So anyway, we're gonna take a break. You know, I'm the Pink Floyd song, you know, about the Walls, um, was a great album.

Did I ever say I saw them in Nassau Coliseum? 19 nas, oh, NAAU co. I guess it was maybe 1980, maybe.

Something like that. The wall tour. Yeah.

It's teared down the wall. Anyway. All right.

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The DOJ is actually suing to block a merger, uh, $14 billion, uh, HPE takeover of Juniper Networks, which I thought was long done, but evidently not. Steven, this doesn't, this doesn't sound like, was this a leftover from the last administration? What, what do you think?

Yeah, it definitely is a leftover from the last administration. Um, we actually covered this on the gestalt it rundown, uh, just before, uh, the handover of power when it was originally announced. And, um, I suggested at that time that maybe this might change, uh, under the new administration or maybe not since.

Uh, I was also wondering if maybe they might keep Lena Khan. They didn't spoiler alert. Um, but they did, they do seem to have, uh, some of the same antipathy toward Silicon Valley companies and, and so on.

So what my suggestion at that point was, you know, it's not a sure thing that the DOJ would drop this case, and sure enough, they haven't. They've proceeded with it. Now, I don't want to say that it's, I don't want definitely going to proceed now.

They have proceeded with it. Uh, but I, I wonder too, this could be something of a leftover or some momentum in the court system or, or some, uh, remaining Biden administration, DOJ folks who are continuing on with their goals and their mission and their project in hopes that it won't be shut down by the new administration. Um, but regardless of the politics of the thing, I think that it's also important to consider the implications here.

Um, we were, you know, essentially we have a few remaining enterprise it, uh, juggernauts, you know, we've got Dell and HPE who are extremely strong and, you know, kind of a full platform, uh, partners for the enterprise along with Lenovo, uh, as a key, uh, full platform partner as well. And then we've got a lot of these, uh, monoliths that are extremely strong in their area. So you look at companies like Juniper or, uh, NetApp and Pure Storage and vast data in the, in the storage space.

Um, but in the networking space, you know, Juniper really does stand alone as a interesting and very successful, uh, competitor. I guess you could put Arista in that market as well, and that, but Juniper, I think has, has been able to really find incredible success in, uh, a couple of verticals. Basically, internet routing is switching, and now thanks to the Mist acquisition, uh, enterprise wifi, to the extent that HPE, which, uh, owns the Aruba wifi assets and has been very successful with that, has been gunning for Juniper and Mist with their Beat Mist campaign for a while.

Now, Cisco, uh, remains by far the leader in some of these markets, but Juniper is a very, very strong competitor. And HPE in many cases is the third player in those markets. Um, and so having HPE acquire Juniper really is sort of a consolidation of, uh, you know, kind of the number two, number three in many markets into a very, very strong number two in those markets and would according to the DOJ stifle competition.

So, you know, if we look at the, the acquisition from that perspective, I can absolutely see why the DOJ might be interested, but frankly, I can't understand why the Trump administration would be interested, because these are very, um, kind of below the radar companies. Even HPEI, I can't imagine, has much of a seat at the table in this new administration. So let me, let me expand on that and excuse me for being snarly cynical, someone didn't.

That's What do we expect, Right? Someone didn't pay their million dollars for the inauguration ball fee. Mm.

And if someone does come over there to kiss a ring, this deal will be allowed to go through. That's my 2 cents. But to your point, Steven, you're right.

The network, and I think this, this deal is not just IT enterprise IT infrastructure per se, you know, meaning servers and, and some of the things that Dell, HP and Lenovo do, but this is very specific to networking and wireless networking and, and the market isn't what it was, right? You still have Cisco, who's the 800 pound gorilla, but when we talk about networking, especially high speed networking and stuff, you know, where there's a big money, big dollar boxes. Steven, you left out Broadcom.

Well, that's true. And, and because I was really focusing on the wireless, sort of the traditional enterprise market right now in the cloud market, Broadcom is the massive gorilla because they are basically the, the OEM to the stars for all of that market. Um, they, they do a tremendous, tremendous amount of business there.

And of course, they also are the developers. They're sort of the quote intel inside for most of the rest of the market as well. Uh, yeah, absolutely.

Broadcom is a company that, uh, ought to be as below the radar as they possibly could to keep, uh, any DOJ interest. Well, Especially not being US based, right? But, yeah.

Well, I think Broadcom is technically a US based company, aren't they? I'll, I'll look it up, but I, but you're right. I mean, Antonio Neri definitely should get on a plane to Mar-a-Lago and, uh, and bring a suitcase full of money.

And I bet that this, uh, particular one will go away. They always Say to bring a suitcase full of only to Florida. Remember, you are Florida brings a case.

But, But yeah. So when you look and, and the other thing is, you know, I, I grew up, if you will, in the internet age, from a career point of view, right? Most of my career, well, a good chunk of my career has been spent in the, with the internet and Juniper.

Yeah. Juniper represented the fresh, bright, you know, next, uh, next gen networking, if you will, right? I look security, they bought the net screen firewalls and that that was the hottest stuff out there.

They were the first ones that really hit Cisco Square in the nose with high speed routing and, and that kind of thing. And they've been very successful with that. Yes, they have.

And they always were. But over the last five to seven years, you know, they, they fell on some harder times. I I, they didn't though they were big in, in being the internet network of a gear of choice.

They didn't catch the cloud wave quick enough. And, and Broadcom did eat their lunch there. Um, you know, Cisco is Cisco HP Pro Curve, and then they bought, as you said, Aruba and, and all of that.

They, they, they've kept their niche though. You know, it's funny, I was just talking to Fernando Montenegro, the new, uh, Futurum analyst for security who used to work at Pro Curve back in the early two thousands. And we were talking about what an opportunity squandered there.

They could have been a strong number two to Cisco, right? And who knows what Juniper or Broadcom would've done had there been a, a more powerful and more well, you know, strategized, uh, pro curve. But, um, well, it's interesting.

Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, HP and HPE, uh, have a long history of attempting to become, uh, a competitor for Cisco. I mean, I worked for Threecom many years ago.

Sure. They bought them too. And, And so certainly there have been many, many attempts by hp Yeah.

To, uh, to be active in that market. And this, this latest one, uh, you know, Juniper would give them, uh, really a solid foundation. Um, that being said, yeah, I, I, I don't wanna predict whether the, it really would like an HP plus Juniper really would, uh, end up becoming a, a, you know, a a, a strong kind of two horse race instead of, uh, a one horse race and a bunch of, uh, competitors.

Um, and then on the Broadcom side, by the way, I can confirm Broadcom is a hundred percent an American company and always has been. So, um, just their CEO lives in S Park. Well, he is from Malaysia, but he, I think he lives here, doesn't he?

Um, well, that's another topic anyway, but, uh, but Htan, uh, you know, I mean, he, he's, uh, incredibly, incredibly sharp guy. And, um, I think he's been sharp enough to, uh, yeah, stay below the, below the radar. 'cause I think, I think if he, even if you ask tech people, I mean, here we are on the Textron Gang, and we have some con confusion about Broadcom and so on.

They're the number, probably the number one company in, in tech in terms of, uh, importance of their products. And, um, and like you said, I mean, especially when you look at their, you know, the, the depth and breadth of their networking capabilities and talent and products, they're everywhere. And yet, you know, many in tech, I think would kind of overlook and forget to even mention them.

And I do wanna make sure that we point out Arista is another incredibly strong, uh, powerhouse in networking at there in wifi. They're in security, they're in, you know, enterprise and, and campus switching. I mean, they're, they're all over the place.

You know, we're seeing a game of musical chairs. That's kinda what I was alluding to at the beginning here. I think Juniper felt that they needed a chair now, and HPE provided that chair.

So it's in Juniper's interest to make this acquisition go forward. I think when Juniper sits down with HPE, which I do think they will, I think it's gonna go through, I'm, I'm not super worried that this thing won't happen. I think when that happens, um, we're gonna see attention turning toward Arista and Pure Storage and NetApp and some of these other competitors and figure out, okay, where's your chair?

And that could be an interesting 2025. Absolutely. Steven, we'll end this segment with this.

I agree with you. I think ultimately this deal gets done. DOJ job set, whether it's someone goes to Florida with whatever, or, or something else, this deal gets done, we'll update it on, on the gang.

We'll keep you posted. Alright. Lemme Tell you, Trump Presidential Library is gonna be the Taj Mahal.

'cause remember, they're not all this money. You say what you want. All this money is not going to Trump.

It's going to Trump's presidential library. Oh. And uh, yeah, exactly.

You know, and, and that is, you mark my words. The day they put him in the ground, his children will be fighting over every cent of it, and none of it'll go there. It's gonna be like succession.

Exactly. That's exactly what this could be. Anyway, let's take, Steven, you're making me, we, we need a balance.

Oh, we're gonna take a break here on Text Organic. We'll be back with a, a special report from Bonnie on Sustainable technology for the DOD. I'm Bonnie Schneider, sustainability contributor to the Techstrong Group.

I'm excited to introduce you to a groundbreaking new initiative from Techstrong Research, the sustainability pulse meter. The pulse meter offers valuable insights into how environmental responsibility factors into tech purchasing decisions for key players in the industry. Position your company as a leader in the industry and differentiate from your competitors with a sustainability pulse meter offered exclusively from Techstrong Research.

Welcome back to the Techron Gang. Earlier we were talking about a, a lawsuit, whether it's going to be, whether it was left over from the last administration. What's gonna happen with this administration?

Well, our next story is also sort of related to the changes in the administration. I'll tell you why. Because late last year, the Department of Defense began testing sustainable materials in weapon cleaning, um, in efficiency in buildings.

And that policy was successful. So now they're looking to expand it across military operations. Now, that was the end of last year before the new administration, but we'll see.

It could be something that's carried over. So I wanted to take a closer look at the technology behind sustainability in the military. Hi everyone, I'm Bonnie Schneider with your Ecotech Analyst Insights.

What does soybean oil, LED lights and a bio-based weapon cleaner have in common? They're part of a new US Department of Defense program to test and deploy sustainable technology. How is this implemented?

Well, one example is found with a weapon cleaner made from agricultural materials instead of petroleum. When tested by Marine Corp shooting teams, the cleaner reportedly cut maintenance time in half from 60 minutes to 30 minutes per weapon and reduced carbon buildup by 30%. Based on these results, the military issued its first sustainable materials requirement for tactical equipment.

All weapon cleaners must contain a minimum of 30% bio-based content. Other eco-friendly measures include smart controls for lighting and heating for military buildings to reduce power use. The Department of Defense is expanding the sustainability program across major commands, focusing on technologies that meet performance requirements and supply chain metrics.

You know, a lot of these things just seem like common sense of being more energy efficient in buildings, for example. That's something people are doing across the board, but the, the biodegradable weapon cleaners, um, maybe there'll be some objection to that. But overall, from, from what I've seen, the, the members of the DOD that, that are involved in this project, were very pleased with the outcomes and the people that were using the weapons also were pleased with the results they were getting.

Steven, thoughts? Well, let's, let's get a little bit of context in here as I love to do. So, first off, the bio preferred program was from the, actually the Department of Agriculture and came out of the 2002 Farm Bill, 2002, not 22.

Uh, and so the idea that the federal government would be investing in bio-based products is not new and is actually pretty entrenched. Unfortunately, from what I've seen, a lot of that has been somewhat controversial in whether or not those bio-based products are actually all that good for the environment. I mean, if you think about the controversy over bio, uh, diesel and, um, ethanol based fuels for vehicles and so on, in, in many cases, those things may not be as good for the environment as, as we would hope.

Now having this extend to the DOD and, uh, to certain programs like, you know, weapons cleaners. Sure. Uh, if the product is good, and it sounds like this product, uh, as Bonnie pointed out in the story, is a pretty good product.

I can't imagine that people wouldn't want to use it. In fact, uh, I did a little research on this thing and it looks like, uh, uh, home gun enthusiasts, yes, we have those in America, uh, for our international listeners. Uh, they like this product too.

So in that case, I imagine that this would probably take off if the thing works and is affordable and, uh, you know, is, is a good product. Um, same with, you know, smart lighting. Uh, you know, smart lighting is not in, in itself a controversial topic, especially when, as you look at the statistics here, it says that, uh, 10% of the electricity used on military bases is for exterior lighting.

Uh, yeah. How about some smart lighting? That seems like a good idea, but at the same time, I'm just a little nervous that somebody in this current new administration is gonna get wind of something, something bio, something, something.

Yeah. Or climate. Climate.

Mm-hmm. And that they're gonna squash this thing down right quick. I mean, Trump has already talked about how much he hates LED light bulbs and low flow showers and electric cars.

So No, it, it's true. It's true. This is gonna be one to watch, I think, um, going forward.

Let, let's not kid ourselves, they're gonna say, this is some woke b******t and try to get rid of it. Right? And that's unfortunately the current state of affairs in this country.

Um, they've already, they, they will purge it from the website as they're purging all of the research and stuff being done. Was Shocked to find that. It's still on the website, by the way.

I looked it up and I was like, oh my gosh, gov, this is gonna go out in an anti kind of thing and Somebody's gonna hear about it on this show. Yeah, right. And they're gonna call Pete hea, You know, this is, look, elections have consequences.

Well, you know what, at least in, in the, in the shorter term, um, as Steven's pointing out, there's awareness about it. Um, if home enthusiasts are finding it effective, it will gain, gain awareness and maybe gain some traction. Um, there were some, I would say controversial aspects of it, because we're talking about smart lighting and some of the testing is done with night vision.

And I think that that's gonna be hard to measure, especially in the case of, you know, a serious emergency, um, where I could see, you know, both sides coming out, you know, with, with viewpoints on it. But as of now, in early 2025, this program still, in fact, Look, when the official policy of the government is, is that climate change isn't real when you're not allowed to mention any of these types of, of clean energy and drill. Baby drill is the motto.

You're kidding yourself. Okay, let's end on a positive note. Okay.

How about a positive note? I'll give you a positive note. As I've said about solar panels, the same is true about LED lighting.

The same is true about some bio-based materials. The same is true about batteries and electric cars. It, when the horse is out of the barn, when, um, when wind power is a, uh, effective and, uh, money generating industry across the world, you're not gonna be able to squash that just because you don't like some aspect of that.

If, if, if, if the product works, it's gonna get used because that's how things go Across the world. That's great here within the confines of our walled environment. Who knows?

But I hope so Steven, um, I think that's gonna wrap up our tech strong gang for this beautiful Tuesday. We'll be back tomorrow Wednesday with more fresh, good stuff to talk about. Lot going on in tech.

Yeah. Uh, we're coming into conference season as well, so we'll, we'll get some updates there. But until then, Steven, thanks.

Well, Steven, when's the next tech field day? Well, we are looking at, um, we're gonna be at Cisco live in Amsterdam, and we are also, uh, getting ready for Cloud Field day. And both of those are happening here in February.

com for more information on those. Great. Fantastic.

Alright, until tomorrow then. This is Alan Shimel for Textron Gang. On behalf of Steven Ani, thanks for joining us.

As usual, we've got a full Textron TV lineup following this, so do stay tuned for that. But until then, we're out.