Techstrong Gang – January 29, 2025

In response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, the United States has started a new space program called Mercury. You're watching Textron Gang. Hey everyone.

Happy Wednesday. Welcome to another edition of, uh, Textron Gang. You know, it's, it's no kidding around.

We've had our little Sputnik moment here, perhaps in ai. We're gonna discuss that. We've got some other AI stuff in as well as a little quantum.

It's AI and quantum. I feel like I'm living in the future. Um, who would've thought?

But we've got a lot of good, good stuff to go over to. We've got good people to go over it with. Let me introduce you to our gang lineup for today.

First of all, sporting her Valentine's colors in red and pink and white. It's our, uh, resident. Well, weren't you, you were just on somewhere in Asia.

Was it Bloomberg, Asia, or Middle East? I was Bloomberg, middle East. Yes, last week.

Very cool. It's our own. Lisa Martin.

Hi, Lisa. How are you? Hey, Alan.

I am so good. I love the Sputnik reference. I'm a space geek.

I used to work for nasa, so, and I'm big into ai, and this is gonna be a really interesting show. I, I agree with you. I'm, I'm into, I'm a space geek too.

Um, going from California, we'll stop over in Colorado for just a quick check in with our very own Mitch Ashley. Hey, Mitch. How are you?

Me? Very good. You know, one of the things I remember, you remember Edward Teller, who was, you know, part of the Manhattan Project.

Sure. Well, I don't think know things he said about Sputnik was, it's a greater defeat for our country than Pearl Harbor. That's how impactful Sputnik was when it happened.

Yeah. Interesting. Interesting.

Mike, do you wanna remind people out there what Sputnik was? Sputnik was an effort where the Russians put a satellite up in the space just before, uh, we got our act together around the moon program, and everybody flipped out, and suddenly we were needed to be on the moon before anything else, and during the Kennedy administration. And, um, I don't know, you know, I'm sure it was a big moment at the time, but then they, you know, looking back in retrospective, I'm not sure anybody's remembers it as bigger moment, but you Guys figured it well, some would, some would say we wouldn't have had a moon program had it not been for Sputnik.

It, it's spurred the, the US to take a hard look and maybe win it all cost. Some people say it might have cost the lives of a couple Gus Gris and a couple of the Apollo one astronauts, right? Because they were under such pressure to keep ahead of the Russians and the Soviets.

The real, the real fear was it was a ballistic missile that put Nik up there, and now we can reach anywhere via space. That's What really freaked people. I mean, about it.

Sputnik itself was nothing more than a little ball that sent out a beep beep beep signal, right? Uh, but we'll, we'll talk more about that. I was afraid to bring it up too early, and I did.

And anyway, Mike Ard, welcome to our show today, thanks to the historical reference. Let's move. Well, hey, Hey.

I would, I would just just say that if we're talking space, I'm going with Steve Miller and Space Cowboy. That's where I think it's at. Yeah.

Well, Well, that okay. That, but some people call him Maurice, but that's okay. Let's, let's move on over to, uh, Amanda, our editor at Lodge, Amanda Ani down in San Angelo, Texas, which is not quite Houston, but, uh, we don't have a problem there, do we, Amanda?

Nope. Doing well, Happy to be here today. Okay.

Just full of space references today. Right. Um, anyway, so look, we are going to talk deep, deep seek, because everyone's talking about it, but we'll, we're gonna save that for our second block.

Let's go to our first block. Mike, you wanna kick it off? All right.

Well, there's been some noise in the social system, and Mark Andreessen is out once again, banging the drum, but he put out a tweet saying that ultimately the goal of AI was to destroy wages to the point where we could then rebuild the economy. That seems like a rather broad statement. I'm sure there's a lot of hyperbole involved, but, um, I'm gonna start with, uh, Lisa, is that kind of stuff helpful at the end of the day?

Because it seems like it just sends everybody running for cover and it's, it's really kind of counterproductive and maybe we do need a national AI strategy because otherwise it's left in the hands of people who don't seem to care what happens to anybody else. Yeah, I thought it was a very bold statement, but that is Mark Andreessen. So I wasn't surprised by that.

But, you know, we, we just came off of talking about the World Economic Forum. That's, well, actually what I was talking Bloomberg Middle East talking about where, you know, the big fear is AI will take jobs, and I talk about that on the radio to help, um, lay people kind of get their concerns as squashed, like guess. There, there we're already seeing jobs replaced by automation.

We haven't talked about wage impact yet. We're seeing that, but we're also gonna see 170 million jobs created in the next five years according to the World Economic Forums feature of Jobs report, which shows positive gain of 78 million as 92 million jobs are replaced. So there's some positive messages coming out there, and I think what Andreessen puts out in terms of wages, I haven't heard that before.

I thought it was a bit of a pessimistic statement. And I, I don't know if that means we need AI regulations. I think that's, that's a topic that we could unpack on its own.

We probably will. But it was, um, something that I think will send shockwaves through Silicon Valley investors, wall Street and Washington. Well, I, I had trouble interpreting, well, trouble, I interpreted two ways that could mean that we, we, our future is Star Trek, where we don't have wages and, you know, people don't have to make a, make a living.

Um, or it could be, uh, medieval England, you know, back, you know, and the, the serfs and the, you know, the, the, the Lords and et cetera. I mean, it could, it could be very draconian. It didn't make sense to me who's gonna buy anything if they don't have any wages, Resource based economy, Right?

Am I gonna afford that Tesla from Elon if I don't have anything? Yeah, That's, that's kind of like a, let's figure that part out. No, I just seemed, uh, it seemed like a very arrogant statement in my opinion.

Uh, so, So the piece, and I don't think we're calling for more regulations as much as I just feel like maybe we need an actual strategy, because it seems like, you know, right now there isn't anybody who's got their hands on the steering wheel, you Know, given the deep seek stuff. Forget a national strategy. This is an all out race to the finish line, or whatever the perceived finish line is, and rules and strategies and processes and safeguards be damned, right?

That's, that's what you're going to get out of, out of our government right now. But look, there was a time where I really respected Mark and Jason, right? The work he did in building out Mosaic and then Netscape and everything when he was still in school.

I mean, he in many ways gave us a web that we u the web that we see today and use today as a, as a venture capital, as a venture capitalist. He's be, he's very successful, but he's come, he's become a b******e, right? He cares about nothing other than the return on his funds.

And maybe that's what vulture capitalists are about. And he's, he's the head vulture, right? And of course, he'd like to see a crush, wages to be more efficient, to get greater returns on his investments.

And that's all the man cares about. And curing favor with our president. And if that's what, that's what he's become, honestly, I pity him.

Mm-hmm. It makes me think of that movie. Show me the money.

Yeah. I mean, that's all the money in, in the world. Don't buy happiness and doesn't make you a good person.

And, and so, but let's, let's get to the, to the crux of the matter, now that I've unloaded that off my chest. Um, is AI going to crush wages? Yeah, when it takes away jobs, it makes menial jobs.

I'm reminded, and I probably have told this story before, my, my oldest son got into the Kelly School at Indiana University when he was applying to college. And I went up there with him on a Friday. And, uh, first thing they did is they brought us into a class with a professor.

And this was an economics professor. And he started telling, telling the students about why minimum wage laws were a bad thing, because it prevents people from giving, it prevents employers from providing jobs to people because the jobs would be too expensive. And so instead, they're going to use machines or some automation or robots to replace people with those jobs.

And I raised my hand, I said, I don't know what PhD you program you went to or what, but this is not a school for my son. Because as an employer, I will tell you, if I have a technology, whether it's robots or AI or anything else that can take the place of a human more economically, I'm a fool not to do it. Right?

They never get sick. They never take a day off. They never steal, they never do things that, you know, some employees could do.

And so, you know, creating keep, keep getting rid of minimum wages just to create busy work jobs, maybe that work for FDR and the Depression and the TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority. It might being as your historical commentary, you could tell people what that is, but it doesn't work in the, in the, in the real world. So if AI is gonna take jobs away, let it take the jobs away.

'cause as Lisa says, it's gonna create other jobs, and those other jobs are gonna be high paying good jobs. Go. Henry Ford, when he took, when he made the assembly line, everyone said, oh my God, it's taken away the jobs of these craftsmen who are building the horseless carriages.

And you know what, it gave rise to the middle class, right? So let the chips forward. They may, this is economics 1 0 1.

Yeah, some, some, some jobs are gonna be d you know, taken away. Some jobs are not gonna be worth paying the kind of wages they pay now. But this is how the, the economy, it's like first growth forest, right?

The old forest burns down, new trees come in. This is how the economy and, and the job market renews itself. Yeah.

And as you mentioned in the last show, um, people going to school should maybe think more about AI related degrees and certifications, because you're gonna be working with a lot more AI that's taking those jobs. So there's gonna be people needing to manage the ai. I, I think there's a real concern that you're gonna have political unrest driven by people who don't understand what you just described, and are gonna wake up one morning and go, let me get this straight.

I can't make a living. So I think I'll go vote for this other fellow over here who's gonna tell me he's gonna restore order to the natural way it was before all this chaos ensued. And, you know, we could have a serious problem.

So, so we have that already, and we have that all. I was just going to say that, Mitch, we're going to have, look, but here's the reality of the way our politics works. Two months ago, people were ready to, had their pitchforks and torches out because the price of eggs were so high.

Well, this week, the price of eggs went back up. And all of a sudden those people with the pitchforks and torches are saying, my God, do you know what goes into pricing eggs here between global climate change, the bird flu and everything else? We've gotta give this thing a chance.

Our country is so g*****n tribalized that they will move heaven and earth and high water to make an excuse for their tribes shortcomings or successes, right? If the, if AI crushes job wages, the red are gonna say it's the blue fault. The blue is gonna say it's the red fault.

And that's just the way it is in this country. I'm sorry. Well, mob rule might be coming this way because you know what happens?

Isn't that what January 6th was? And now they're pardoned. Let's not even go here.

I was gonna, I was gonna say also, Alan, thank you. You, you and I were in sync on that one is, you know, we, we've had this multiple times. Just one example is manufacturing, leaving the United States, right?

Business pushed manufacturing overseas, because it's more economical. It, you know, saves money. It helps you be more competitive.

Uh, it brings a few challenges with it, but it disrupts jobs, right? Yeah. And you can talk about this steel industry or, or manufacturing community.

And we as a country don't have a history of putting together programs to help people, like seriously help people that are displaced when big changes happen in, in our economy, except for the depression. That's probably really the only exception I can think of. Um, so it's a, it is a natural order.

And I, my, just my personal opinion, I think a lot of the unrest has been multiple sequence of that between manufacturing and steel, and then, uh, robotics and then the cloud. And now AI is the next thing. And, you know, is there, is there a, uh, tipping point or a flash point where, you know, all of a sudden everybody, there's a big uprise?

Hasn't happened yet, but possible. I I just think this is another cycle that we're going through. I, I, I, you know, and I was gonna bring it up, when we talk about deep seek later, unfortunately, the knee jerk reaction of too many of the quasi intellectuals or not, they're not intellectuals.

The people who are in power right now is, let's put up a wall to keep the barbarians out, whether it's immigrants, technology, jobs, factories, whatever. Let's put up a wall to keep the barbarians out. They, they only did, they were only able to accomplish this.

'cause they used our technology. They used our chips, they used our universities. They came in here with as criminals and DR and broad drugs.

And let's put up a wall and keep the barbarians out. It didn't work well for China 2000 or a thousand years ago. It won't work well for us.

This is you, you've gotta embrace change. You've gotta embrace new realities, adapt and thrive. You can't, you can't react by trying to move ti move time back.

You can't turn back time like Cher says. And that's, that's Shimmy's uh, shimmy's advice for you all today from the Great philosopher show. Yeah, her worst, but Gods, if I could turn back time.

So anyway, We got, we got a lot of music on this show today. Yeah, We got a couple of music references there. Mitch may wanna break out the guitar, but, um, in a minute, I'm, I'm holding myself back.

All right, let's take a break then. We're gonna come back. And this is we, the main events coming on up.

Uh, we're gonna talk about deep seek target for cyber attack poppycock. We'll be right back. com is the leading resource for news analysis and education on challenges facing the cybersecurity industry.

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And yes, well, everybody's talking about this new AI model from China that's got everybody kind of bent outta shape. And the latest is allegedly that, uh, that suffered a cyber attack and they were limiting registrations for the most popular downloaded piece of software in recent memory. But some people argue that that may or may not be the case.

But Amanda, I know you've been following this on the socials. What are you hearing? What are you seeing?

Oh, so many things. So, um, I actually have a few comments fold up that I'm gonna share. And it kind of goes back to what we're talking in the first segment.

Um, but, uh, so one of 'em says yes, and the irony is that Nvidia gave them the lesser hardware and leftovers. But one thing I'm reminded is that the Chinese government has invested heavily in their infrastructure. And I think the United States will be doing that over the next four years.

It will be a big race. Uh, then somebody else said, um, they're now under the microscope, whether political or legitimate concerns, China is the new Russian spy. So in my opinion, we should be aware of that implication in our conversations.

Um, and then, uh, I was reading that article that was, um, talking about, oh, here we have another popular app from China. Um, and you know, if you listen to the conspiracy theories out there, which sometimes turn out to be true, I'm just saying, um, if everybody was paying attention to TikTok, when it got, um, pulled down, I was on TikTok when it got pulled down. Um, and then it came back up the next day.

And now everybody's saying that, um, the content's completely different. The algorithm changed. There's nothing about fires, there's nothing about the drones, there's nothing about the border.

So was China trying to spread descent there through that app? So in that regard, my thought, like, the wheels are spinning in my brain, yes, it could be an attack. So deep seek suffered this attack.

It could be an attack from somebody that, um, is trying to break 'em down because their competition. But could it be it's their own attack because people are already on it and now their own attack got all this information. I don't know.

I'm just saying. So let me weigh in here. Mitch.

I did you wanna go first? Mitch, you go ahead. You go ahead.

I'll jump in. All right, so first of all, I think this is as simple as we live in a crazy world where all of a sudden you're the top app on the app store, and it's like that IBM commercial, 10 orders, 12 orders, 200 orders, 5,000 orders, 5 million orders. Oh my God.

Oh my God, we succeeded beyond our dreams. I think that's what happened here. I think that they just didn't have the infrastructure to set up account to set up account registrations, and it crashed their servers.

It's a very, it happens all the time now, but the world we live in and the stakes, you know, at, at play here right away we say, oh, it's a cyber attack. It was worth down. Who, who's looking to bring these people down?

The NSA what you, do you really think open AI launched a cyber attack on deep sea? Come on. Who know?

It's just conspiracy theorists. I'm quoting. Oh, I'm just kidding.

Yeah, no, I did. And there's a, you know what they say about conspiracy theory? It's every toilet has one sitting on top of it.

Okay, now who, who is going to attack them? Right? It now you want to get really conspiracy theories.

It was the Chinese attacking themselves to make it look like the Americans attacked the Chinese. Back to my article that I wrote Sunday, I know that, you know, that I know that, you know, let's stop. There was no financial gain here necessarily in, in, in this attack nation state.

I don't think it's, it's not the u it's, it's a short term silliness to, to block that right now. Right? That's, I I think, you know, again, Sputnik is launching ballistic missiles on us, and oh my God, I better go dig my shelter out and make sure I got a lot of water saved up.

It, it's all part of this fearmongering, keep the barbarians out. Stop it. Was it as simple, they crashed their servers.

It wasn't a cyber attack, and they're claiming it's a cyber attack to curry sympathy favor and patience from the audience. Because you know how we all are here? My internet doesn't work at 35,000 feet on the plane.

God dammit, I'm not flying that American airline anymore. So they don't want people to say that. It's easier for them to say, well, we can't get you registered.

'cause someone cyber attacked us must be those ugly Americans, right? Boris? Yes, Natasha.

Hey, did you hear about this new afternoon show? It's called As the AI World Turns. Exactly.

Exactly. Well, hey, to quote, uh, a famous philosopher, Madonna, don't cry for me. Argentina, who gives a crap, you know, you know, another attack on another website, who gives a Crap?

I'll, I'll point. That's not really A story I don't think. I'll point out something.

I don't know if you caught Pat Gelsinger having a last laugh, but he was yes. Pointing at the fact that, uh, gee, isn't it a, an amazing achievement that somebody actually created all these AI models using cheap, inexpensive hardware? And he was like, Hmm.

Well, so that brings up the real mean of the issue here. Yes. Whether it was a cyber attack or just a, the stuff, you know, uh, over their, their machines couldn't handle the load.

The real issue here is this Sputnik kind of reaction that we're seeing, right? It, it created such, I I I'm too young for Sputnik, right? I wasn't born in, I was born in 1960, so that was already, I think after Sputnik.

I do remember the early astronauts. I certainly remember the moon landing. Um, that being said, from what I learned about it in school and being a history buff, is it created tremendous angst in the West and in the US specifically.

And had it not been for that moment, and it really was just a moment, right? The US never would have moved the way it moved in, in, in, you know, with NASA and the space program and it, and it was Sputnik. And, and then if you remember, the Russians were the first one to put Gregorian the first man in space mm-hmm.

A couple months before the us, John, Glenn, Alan. She, so I think that's what we're looking at here, right? The fact of the matter is, stop trying to say, I, you know, I read people, even some of our fu and rather on LinkedIn today saying, until I see this replicated on, on, on our reliable hardware, I won't believe a word that said stop.

Maybe it's not a hundred percent, but 90% of what these people have done is true. They might have found a a, a better mouse chap. That doesn't mean the game is over.

It just means now we got a new mousetrap to play with and can we take that build on it, innovate out, innovate, outcompete, outperform. That's America. That's what we need to do.

We chose to go to the moon, not because it's easy, because it's hard, right? Here's what I like calling like about deep fake is that it, it, it actually has a unintended consequence. Wait, Mitchell, what did you call it?

I'm Oh, deep fake. Sorry. That was, It was, Ian was talk about whew.

Okay moment. So, deep take is, you know, I don't believe what the Chinese say about how much time it took and how much money, and who knows could be true, could not be true. But the, I think the fact of it is it gets us off of this hardware infrastructure train of that's, you know, a bigger, better hammer solves all problems.

And it's putting it back on the board to say, all right, if this is possible, whether they did it that way or not, or whether they had Nvidia chips or not, and let's go back the drawing board and let's use a constrained model of trying to do this much faster, much cheaper. And how can we do innovation down that path instead of just complaining we can't get enough chips from Nvidia. So I think there's actually a, a, it's sort of the, uh, the Star Wars effect.

You remember that when Reagan announced that against the Russians about we're gonna be able to do all these things in space and, you know, attack Russia and defend ourselves. And 90% of it was fake, but it was, you know, misinformation. In some ways, this is kind of that moment with deep seek for us, like to get us, it's, it's gotten us to react.

We'll see if we forget about it by tomorrow, but it could have a, A lot of reaction, isn't it? Calling to question though. Sorry, Mike.

Um, you know, something that we've been hearing about for such a long time is just that hundreds of billions being invested in AI infrastructure and investors wanting to see where's the ROI, where's the proof in the pudding? And we just saw a big commitment with Project Stargate, what, a week ago-ish committing 500 billion for AI infrastructure In the US that didn't age well. Did at least It didn't age well, not at all.

But does it call into question the metas uh, the Microsofts who are saying, we're gonna be investing $60 billion each in AI infrastructure. Does it call that into question? Can it be done?

Is it, it's, you know, they're saying we can do this way faster, way cheaper. Now there's rumors that they have access to 50,000 Nvidia chips that they can't disclose because of export rules. But does it call into question the validity of the, of the, some of those in the magnificent seven who are investing bill tens of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure?

I I, I've got a few thoughts on that, if you don't mind. 2, 2, 2 streams of thought there. One is, look what they've done here with, and I, I've been reading some of the technical stuff and admittedly it's over my head, right?

I don't claim to be an AI engineer or know the final workings of neural network and, and training and models and so forth. However, what I have read is that what they've done here is really optimize for math, mathematics, and code. Now, will that allow it to branch out into more general reasoning, perhaps, but it's really focused around mathematics and code.

And it may not do the kinds of things, but you know, for instance, they say it's more comparable to the four, oh, uh, chat GPT model, not the O one or even the O three, which is newer, that it wouldn't necessarily, they don't think it would necessarily scale, for lack of a better word, or compete with O one or O three. So that this methodology of re reinforced training and so forth on, on cheaper hardware and less resources may work for this narrow type of use, which is a very useful use, right? But it may, you may still need to, to scale the heights, if you will.

So of, of you know of a I or whatever, Mike, I got you. I'll come back to my next point. Go ahead.

You jump in. To me, that kind of sounds very similar to what we see in the car industry, right? There are very expensive Maseratis that might be built by open ai.

We're using their model, and then there's gonna be generic models that are next to free because we built them using open source software, and that's gonna be what the bulk of most people use would Be. Is that gonna limit the number API calls to open ai? Absolutely.

But, And so be it, if that's the way it is, that's the, that's the market at work. But you mentioned the key point there, the open source, that's the real winner here. The real winner here is open source.

This thing was supposedly built using open source models and it, and in and itself is, was released under an open source license, right? Which allows other people to, you know, Mitch and I have been through this with open source. Uh, it allows other people to use it to innovate off of it, to continue developing and, and seeing it in their own labs and seeing what happens there.

Can they replicate it? Can they improve upon it? For everyone who wants to put up the wall to keep the barbarians out, it it sand, the harder you squeeze it, the more it slips outta your fingers.

And when you release this kind of thing as open source, I mean, I'm trying to think of a movie that, that once it got out there, it was like you in everybody's hand. Covid You mean like Covid? Well, COVID, well that's not a movie, but no, you know, ano another words, once it's out there, it's wildfire, right?

And, and you're not going to be able to build a wall around it and keep it out or, or what have you. It's open source. And that's, that's the real beauty of, of open source.

And, and so we're gonna have to see how this plays out. It, it may be a world, Mike, as you where, you know, open AI is a Cadillac or a Maserati, but a lot of people are happy driving a Chevy. Well, I think it's, it's myopic to only have a view of the goal is general ai, right?

And every, and that's the only thing that's valuable. I think it's this, this shows that there are multiple paths and sometimes good enough is good enough. Not everyone has to have the latest iPhone 17 pro max, like Alan and I do.

Some folks are happy to have the starter entry level, right? And, and, you know, is, is everybody gonna be able to use the highest end model that does the greatest latest thing? No.

A lot of people will be able to leverage a service that is much cheaper and is good enough for what they need that job to do. So I think it's myopic to think that there's one path, we're all headed towards one destination. Yeah, that's part the race.

But Mitchell, they call it the singularity. Come outta that, right? We we're gonna get Velcro, we're gonna get Tang, we're gonna get all these other things that come out as part of the space race.

But Mitch, they call it the singularity. Mike, I'm sorry, go ahead. I Know they, I'm, I'm looking forward to when they try to quote unquote ban this.

And then, you know, when we're chasing immigrants, we'll be chasing smugglers of the deep sea AI model. Yeah, let me check your chips in our plane. Lemme check, lemme check your chips.

I mean, that, that, but, but unfortunately, you know, I, I look, you know, I'm not a huge fan necessarily of Donald Trump, but did you hear what he said about this? Right? He said, wow, this, this is, this is, this has gotta give us reason to, to try harder to do more.

But the good news is, is ultimately it's gonna be better for everyone. 'cause it's gonna bring the price down. It's gonna make it more available.

That's the right attitude here, where other people in our government are saying, this is the Chinese Communist Party attacking us. They've built it using the technology they stole from us. They, you know, those are the keep build the wall, keep the barbarians out people, and no, we, I think you, you take this and say, okay, thank you.

Thank you for waking us up. Thank you for showing us that. Maybe there is another way.

Let's, let's out innovate them. Let's, let's build on this. Let's go do a better, let's do what we do, build it better.

This can be a great catalyst. Yeah, exactly. That's, that's, that's the added, this isn't the time to build your bomb shelter.

We don't need any ducking cover drills. Let's go for it. Absolutely.

All right, Mitch, take us over the hill. Um, take us over the hill. Thank you.

We're gonna take a break here on Text and Gang. Let's, let's, let's get outta this cutting edge stuff of AI and we'll talk about some quantum. Um, you're watching Textron gag, Discover Textron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation.

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All right, folks, the next conversation is about Q day. It's coming. We don't know when, but the theory is, is that we're seeing rapid advances in quantum computing, and that's gonna break all our cryptographic algorithms.

So we need to replace those algorithms, which is much easier to say than apparently do, because apparently some folks are saying it's gonna take years. And if we don't start now, we won't have it in time for when Q day arrives. Uh, I don't know, Alan, you've been following this too, but there, first there was Google talking about a new quantum willow chip, and then there was, uh, some other startup talking about an even faster chip.

So it seems like the faster these systems get, the more realistic they are. The sooner QA arrives. What do you think?

Well, let me first deal with the story at hand and then I'll, I'll go, I'm gonna do it backwards. I'm gonna go from that specific story to the more general quantum stuff. I usually like to go general to specifics Socratic method, but that's the martini glass part, right?

We'll, we'll go the other way. Um, this Palo Alto network announcement about post quantum cryptography, APIs available, congratulations, of course. NIST put out post quantum algorithms for encryption.

Now, about a year and a half ago, DigiCert and some of the other cert providers have been using post quantum or have available post quantum algorithms for their certificates now for some time. So this sounded very much to me, like a me too. And hey, they're talking about all this AI stuff.

We don't wanna be just another AI story. Let's put out a quantum story. Congratulations Palo Alto.

Um, but to quantum in general, you're right, we have been seeing a steady drumbeat here. Uh, the willow chip you mentioned, uh, I know some of the folks who are at the, uh, not CES, the Supercomputing show in Atlanta. There were two different quantum computers.

One from A IBM, which is still the perceived leader in quantum, um, one from a startup. Google does have the, uh, the willow chip as you said, but also importantly, Google's, um, not deep seek and not deep fake DeepMind. They bought DeepMind a while ago.

Not deep thought either, right? But DeepMind uh, announced it, I don't know, maybe a week or two ago, um, that they were actually using AI on quantum computing, uh, issues and programs that made, made using quantum existing quantum chips, existing quantum technology, much more feasible and maybe pushing up than the, the day for Q day, right? When quantum becomes more.

Um, but it's funny, I, this isn't, I I, I'm fascinated with quantum computing 'cause I'm fascinated with quantum mechanics in general. I, I'm just not smart enough to grasp it. Uh, but I read it and my head goes, um, I don't know if I can make that noise again.

But anyway, um, it's coming. It's coming. But when the more people I speak to, the more I realize it's probably not coming till 2030, maybe even later.

'cause there are significant hurdles, right? For most tests that you're going to use the computer for, you're gonna have to bifurcate what needs to be done at a quantum, on a quantum processor versus what needs to be done on traditional binary and then bring it back together, put it back, segregate, bifurcate it back out, bring it the, the, you know, just the, the, the, the blueprint, the, the, the process for what you're going to need to really run real world things. Where Quantum's gonna be able to help you like that, I think is still a while away.

Probably beyond my horizon is, is how I put it. No, I heard something, uh, kind of about that. Alan, um, Dr.

Bob Suiter, who is a mm-hmm. Uh, analyst at Futurum. He covers Quantum.

Yep. And he comes from like longtime IBM and he worked on quantum and other things there. So he is a real authority on this.

He, he said something, and again, you know, I'm learning too, right? I'm no quantum expert by far. You said that, um, the challenge with quantum is it, it's not good at things that require a lot of data.

So if you have problems that don't, that don't require a lot of data, I'm not sure why that's an issue. Um, it's really good for it. So to your point about offloading, how do you, what kinds of things do you offload or handle other ways maybe in traditional, I mean, You need microservices to the umpteenth degree, right?

And Wait a minute, wait a minute. What, what about this Chinese Deep C quantum startup that found cheaper hardware in these No. Did they got taken down by a cyber attack, Right?

RIP. So, uh, my thoughts when I, when I was reading up on the quantum is, um, there's a lot of preparation on the cybersecurity front when we do hit the, you know, QA because all those people holding the keys that are gonna be easily encrypted at that point. So what are your thoughts on the cyber aspect?

So I, I think this is a case where we actually are out in front of things and that, you know, because NIST and I think Mitre was involved and private industry have been putting out kind of quantum proof algorithms now for well over a year. By the time you have Q Day, all the locks on all the doors and the safes and the banks and everything aren't gonna break, right? There's a white two KI don't, I, well, maybe the banks will have the resources to prioritize it, but I think there's large numbers of companies that are dependent upon encryption that are gonna wake up one more and discover, discover that the stuff that they had today that they thought was encrypted was harvested five years ago and is now being decrypted and all kinds of embarrassing things.

Well, that, that could happen, right? Stuff that was take like salted or hash salted, uh, information that is now undergo. But, but that information, Mike has a fungible life.

It was five years ago. It may very well be useless by now. It's kinda like email addresses.

Unless Q day comes a little sooner maybe, or, you know, there are things that companies do that they still don't want anybody to know About 10. Well, this is why there's such a big push to make the lives of, of encryption certificates shorter, right? They wanna go from never ending to two years to a year to 90 days, to 30 days to two weeks, because they wanna force the system to adopt the latest and greatest, uh, encryption for your, for your encrypted, you know, certificates and stuff that will be quantum proof And they're doing applications of, of certificate life of minutes and seconds because that's how quickly they want to turn over.

I mean, I think that risk of the, the data being, you know, unencrypted later, there's all kinds of rumors about government storing and maybe bad guys storing encrypted information to be able to use it. The problem is, uh, quantum computing has to be at a price point that you can get to use it besides being the, I mean, government Of the US or I mean mean this rumor as, as the NSA might have a quantum computer already. Yeah.

Just, but most, Most people are not gonna have access to it for some time. I'm sure that room is the Chinese Communist Party does too. That's how they got into this deep seek thing.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Business. I mean, the, the bottom isn't gonna fall out of the quantum market the day they announce they've got a quantum computer you can buy.

Yeah, it's gonna be a while before it's accessible to a lot more people. I'm not sure nation states care about the cost that much. So Chime is just gonna build one, we're gonna build one.

Oh, that's who can afford to do it. I'm saying you and I And everybody know, so be used for that. But that being said, you know, I, I'm gonna call this my Zein Pike theory, Uh, Um, right.

I'd like the Thon Webb. No, no, no. Zebulon Pike, right?

Is don't underestimate the ability of some lone wolf genius who figures out a way to, to make quantum computing or figures out a cheaper, faster AI thing and launches himself into low earth orbit just as a Vulcan ship is going by. And, and ha you know, boom, the next thing you know, we're part of the federation, um, this, that could very well be, I mean this, this right outta Star Trek law for all uche out there, right? The earth, you know, there's a, there's a, some sort of caustic war between the powers that be and, and, you know, people are dispersed, kinda living in small groups.

But, you know, some guy out in the, was it in Minnesota or somewhere he was, or Wyoming niche, I don't remember. He, he manages to, to break this, the speed of light barrier and, and achieve warp speed. And, and, uh, and that's how he Was in the set.

Yeah. In this, uh, We might have similar kind of breakthroughs. Yeah, man, deep seek is sort of like that.

We might have a sim there might be someone right now in, in, uh, Nebraska working on some quantum Siri, right? It's, it's right next to their coal fusion reactor in the other side of the garage. Well, could be.

Hey, this is the year for nuclear fusion. That's what I'm waiting for. I've been waiting for that my whole life too.

Zephyr Cochrane. Zein Cochrane, not Avil, not Pike. Yeah.

Captain Pi, captain Pike. Right? But it Zephyr Cochran.

That was the myth. Mm-hmm. Right.

See, we just saved, remember the Warp Drive? We just saved you 4,672 emails. So there you go.

There you go. Thank you. Thank you.

Deep seek for that answer. I just got out. Exactly.

They filtered that out. But, um, anyway, it's been an interesting show here today. I hope you guys have had as much fun as I've had talking about some of this stuff.

The, these, these are great tasting. I'm glad we have this forum to talk about it. I'm gonna just do a quick plug for my own thing this Thursday, 2:30 PM Eastern Time.

I'm gonna be on LinkedIn live for my second episode of Shimmy. Says it's only about 10, 12 minutes, but I'm gonna be talking about Deep Seek. If you want to talk to me about it, come on to LinkedIn live.

com page where and LinkedIn Live will be there. And I'm welcome your questions and comments. I'll try to hit 'em if they're there.

If not, you could just listen to me. Um, Mitch, you are heading out to, uh, tech Field Day ai, right? Yeah.

AI Field Day in San Jose. Some great companies we're talking to about the latest steps that they're doing. You can watch it on Techstrong TV tomorrow and I guess today and tomorrow.

Good. Um, you have some great conversations. We have delegates that are asking all those good questions you'd love to ask, right?

Um, we have several vendors that are coming in, so join us there. It's also on technical day website, YouTube, YouTube channel. It's on all the papers.

It's YouTube channel, text Channel. It'll also be the Textron Gang for, uh, um, Thursday and Friday This week will be live from San Jose at Will Not Live, but recorded from San Jose Tech Field Day, AI Mitchell will be there, along with John Willis, Steven fst, some of our other friends. So stay tuned for that.

Lisa, what do you've got going on? I've got going on just more research on ai. One of the things I'm gonna be talking about on the radio is AI powered serendipity.

Ever wonder when you're scrolling through like Netflix and it pops up something that you would never have, have thought was the right thing. What is AI powered serendipity? How does it work?

And why is it a good thing? And something to also be a little bit concerned about. So that's something I'm gonna be digging into for this Week.

Very cool. You'll have to come back and tell us. Yeah, that will be On, that will be on the next episode of Textron Gang that you're on.

So we'll be coming back to That. We're coming back to that. Perfect.

I'm, I would just say, you know, um, are you gonna translate all that LinkedIn, shimmy says stuff into Chinese for our new AI overloads. How's that Going? I don't have to.

It gets done. It gets done automatically. All right.

On, on Pentium chips, by the way. Oh, Old school. Amanda, what do you, I know you've been up to your ears here.

We should announce Amanda's recently, uh, assumed a new role here at Techstrong. Amanda is now our senior managing editor for All Techstrong sites. So Congratulations to Amanda.

Thank you. Wonder go Amanda. You go.

All right. It is, It is, it comes with great responsibility because, well, if anything goes wrong, the first call goes to Amanda. There.

That's good. That's good. Maybe you can get one of those Chi Chinese AI to help you.

Um, just kidding. All right, look, thank you. Wherever you are.

Was it Raim Cochran. Raim Cochrane. Yep.

You know, I actually saw a thing at somewhere in Iowa. There's a, it's the future birthplace of James T. Kirk because maybe there's somewhere there.

Anyway, we've had enough, we've gone into One episode. Does he make his first appearance on Star Trek? Cochran, on the original series, they crash land on a planet, and he has a companion who's, who's cured him and keeps him alive.

Immortally. And she becomes a, a human person 'cause they're in love and they live happily ever after, but not forever, because now they're humid. Do you remember that one, Mitch?

Oh, I do. I do. And I think it was like the movie Star Trek seven or something when it was the New Generation Next Generation took over.

When, When he, when he breaks the war, Barry? Yes. Yes.

I think it was the Sierra Mountains is where he was, or somewhere like that. All good for all you chuckies out there. Don't say we don't cover it here on Textron Gang.

We'll be back tomorrow Transferred aluminum. That's another invention. That's a great one.

So, Yep. We'll be, we'll be back tomorrow, actually. Excuse me.

We'll be back tomorrow, uh, from Silicon Valley and, and Tech Field Day. So stay tuned for that. Stay tuned for, uh, we actually have Tech Field Day AI live on our show today, as well as some more great news and content on Techstrong tv.

Until then, though, this Alan Shimel, on behalf of all our gang members here today, good luck. We're out.