Techstrong Gang – March 12, 2025

Hey, have I got an AI agent for you? You're watching Textron Gang. Hey everyone.

Happy Wednesday. Welcome to Techron Gang, man. If you've got an AI agent, I got someone who wants to buy it.

What a time to be in the AI agent broker business. Um, a lot going on around that. Of course, a lot going on in the world in general.

Our stock market is in correction territory. Uh, a lot of uncertainty and feared and loathing, uh, and a lot more than that. But we've gonna bring it to you all here.

Aren Techron gang. Let me introduce you to our gang for this fine. Wednesday he is out at sea where he's, he's a laptop short, but still able to join us through some premier hacking.

He's our security expert. Chris Blast. Hey, Chris, how are you man?

I am good. Good to be here with you, Alan, and everybody else I'm in, uh, near Summerland Key today. So we can look that up on your Google Maps and follow, follow the bouncing ball.

Where is Chris moving from Summerland key to West Texas, A newly hot data center territory as, as evidence on yesterday's gang show. She's our, uh, managing editor, Amanda Ani. Hey, Amanda, how are you?

Hello. Good. Happy to be here.

As always. Good to see you sharp too. Not fuzzy at all.

Looking very sharp. Amanda, uh, moving up from Texas. We'll head over to Colorado where we're not sure he could see himself, but he could see us.

He is a DevOps expert, pretty renowned analyst, and just all around Greek guy from down under living in Colorado, expat in Colorado. Andy Mann. Hey, Andy.

How are you Al? I am doing fabulously well, Mike, good to see you again. Good to see you.

And then, uh, last but certainly not least, the dean in Harrison, our chief content officer, Mike Ard. Good to Mike. No, no coal for the year.

I don't mean cold. I mean Derek, Jerry Cole, I'm Aware. Tommy John, and I think we have to pay him and then he becomes a free agent.

So it's insult injury, right? Um, no, I think we have one more year after that, but I read that the Yankees have a tremendous insurance policy on him. And this, you know, not that we care about the Steinbrenner's wallet, but Yes.

Well, I think I'm going to go in the AI agent insurance business. That sounds like a great idea. Yeah, I just wish I had some more AI agents to sell.

Which leads us kinda to our first, uh, story. Mike, why don't you take it away? All right.

Well, AI agents continue to be all the rage. 85 billion, which sounds like a lot of money, but I think that's chunk change in the AI era. But this company move works, helps you orchestrate your agents.

So you ain't gonna, ServiceNow is maintaining its classic position here where it's helping orchestrate workflows. And now we'll extend that to AI agents. Meanwhile, though, the Chinese are out there saying that they've created an AI agent that is, uh, much less expensive.

Perhaps not as smart as some of the AI agents that are out there, but certainly not as costly implement. And then there's a report from SnapLogic talking about how large enterprises are all in on AI agents, and we're gonna invest about a million dollars on average over the next 12 months to build these things out. And it seems like there's a bit of a frenzy going on here, Andy, so what's your take on all this?

Well, I'm, I'm loving this for these businesses, by the way. Um, yeah, the, the move work was really move works. You gotta watch out, which, uh, you RL you Google there, uh, you might end up in workforce automation.

It's not that one. It is agentic AI for CRN, this makes a whole lot of sense. For 20 or 30 years we've been trying to automate some of the simplest stuff within the customer service C-R-M-I-T-S-M kind of space, right?

Things like password resets or provisioning or anything like that. And automation is good, but intelligent automation's gonna be even better. And so for ServiceNow, I certainly see this as a really positive opportunity to drive that level of automation further.

They've got a lot of orchestration already built in. This is gonna work out really well, I suspect. Look, it's gonna cause a little bit of concern, I suspect for some of it's, uh, prior customers who it may now compete with.

Let's see what happens to, you know, for example, a a Microsoft, for example, using that software. Um, the valuation's pretty crazy, but I think you are right, Mike. It is.

It's just this is, it used to be a billion dollars was the entry fee to cloud. I think 2 billion might be the entry fee to, to ai. Their last valuation was about 2 billion LA in June.

I think 21 was their last funding round. Um, so that's a big number. So we'll see whether there's actual ROI, but I love this because it's a good use case that's aligned to what they're already doing that gets them into a market they desperately need to start dominating.

I'm, I'm excited to see how this all plays out. Go ahead. I would say their, their valuation in 2021 had nothing to do with ai.

Nut nut. I sounded like I was on the streets in New York. Again, nothing to do with, uh, AI agents, right?

Yeah. 85 billion, is that the value of the agent over and above that 2 billion mark that they got in 2021? I don't know, but it is a big fat number and I, I, I suspect it's not all based upon ag agentic ai.

Amanda, I'd love to get your opinion on this. 'cause buried in that SnapLogic report that I mentioned was a, a question about whether or not the senior IT folks who were surveyed trusted AI agents as much or more than people. And when you added it all up, about 40% or so said they as much and 44% more said more.

They don't trust the people to execute these things. Um, you know, what's your emotionally, intellectually, how does that kind of grab you? Yeah.

So this remains an issue. Um, yeah, we're seeing more and more, uh, trust in AI and AI adoption. Um, so I think the goal, and I, I've had conversations with people, like right now we're talking about, oh, AI agents, like it's a thing.

But I think the goal is in the future, that's just gonna be something that's integrated across everything. It's just gonna be expected. It's just gonna be there being used by everyone, just, um, like other technology in the past.

Mm-hmm. I feel though, Chris, I don't know your thoughts here, but I feel like we still have to supervise these things and there's gonna be a tendency to maybe trust them too much. And we are gonna have to supervise these AI agents much like any other employee, as far as I can tell, Right?

Yeah. The, the risk as always in outsourcing any security function is that you're not doing it right. So yeah, pondering that, uh, that, that, uh, trusting more or as much, and I think it's probably justifiable, right?

Because we know how humans are, and this is a machine, you know, if it's wrong, it is probably predictably wrong. But, you know, we, we have to have the human in the, in the process. Otherwise, you know, the, the, the agents don't know what to do.

I mean, the, the risk of corruption, uh, of corrupted use needs to be on all our minds. Um, because the, the benefits are again, just so large from a security perspective, having, and I like that we're actually talking AI agencies, not Skynet. This is not the AI out there.

We're all using this technology embedding in things. What does that mean? Right?

A lot of good, uh, work we can do with security, but to your point, if we just start trusting and walking away, that's, that can't work out well All. So, so Andy, let me walk you through this concept a little bit here. So we have all these AI agents, they clearly need to be observed.

They need to be tested, they need to be governed, you know, or are we essentially about to create agent AI ops here? Oh, you, you from your word mouth to God's lips. I reckon.

Uh, God's ear, isn't it, Mike? Uh, well probably 'cause the next step is obviously we need AI managers to supervise the AI agents. Um, look, I actually think that over time this gets a lot easier.

We've seen this before with automation, virtualization, and cloud, right? We've seen it with DevOps and straight through process. We've seen it with things like RPA, yeah, trust, but verify, right?

And absolutely, Chris, we've gotta have governance, compliance, risk management. Um, these things can go haywire and cause immense expense and trauma, um, in, in very short amount of time. But this was always true of automation and orchestration as well.

And so I just think we get to the point where we have to click that button that says, don't ask me anymore. Um, and that's the point where we're going to get to, and that's when the ag agentic AI ops manager will take over. I think you're absolutely right, Mike, ag agentic, AI ops, it's an extension of where we've been with AI and ML and advanced analytics and automation and orchestration.

This all comes together. It makes a lot of sense to me. Mm-hmm.

Do we think, though, do we think though, eventually it is gonna be so ingrained that it's gonna just be, become more of a, a, a standard cybersecurity roll in issue? And maybe to Mike's point, we'll just have insurance covering any issues, anything that goes wrong, we'll have, uh, a whole insurance industry for it. I, in, in short, yes.

Right. You know, this, this, You know, as you, you know, go back to that trust thing. We know right now, uh, uh, I, if you really wanna get into cybersecurity, you can get red teams and blue teams and green teams.

You can do a lot of work and you learn a lot of things you can advance a lot, right? But we always know, you know, there could be missing things, right? You get a vulnerability, uh, uh, a test, you'll find a certain amount in some left.

So just the sheer power of building this in, and to your point, insurance, yes. When insurance can get predictable, the insurance market has to, you know, has for centuries and will continue to exist. Cyber risk remains, you know, a difficult to quantify risk.

This may, through sheer empirical power provide some of the basis for predictable insurance risk for the remainders. We've talked about this in the past, but I still don't understand how I'm gonna manage all these agents. And if every app has an agent and I've seen some agents out or apps out there that have six or seven agents that they're popping up in my screen.

And so do I need like a super agent at some point to reign in all these different agents? Is that how that's gonna play out? Alan, you have any thoughts?

Yeah, no, it sounds like a job for Kubernetes. You know, the ultimate orchestrator. I mean, I do think you will need a management tool, though.

A system, though. This is true. You know, we started with automation.

We started with scripting, right? So we had a library of scripts, then we had script managers, then we had a library, virtual code managers, right? Then we put it together and we started to do orchestration.

Um, then we started to do virgin control on our orchestration routines. This is where we're going. It makes sense.

It's not gonna happen straight away because we're in the middle of the revolution. We're excited. Everything is just a $2 billion entry fee.

We're gonna get there. But we absolutely gonna need some kind of orchestration manager, automation manager, AI manager, agentic manager. We absolutely will.

And I would just point out that in terms of the risk, this is like another employee. Now, this is not just a tool. This is doing work.

And if our biggest risk is insider threat, which I believe it continues to be, why wouldn't agents be that risk? They're going to definitely need automated management. So I I have a theory, I'm sorry, gag.

Chris. I was just Gonna say you, Mike, you know, the short answer is yes. And it's, when you say, I, I mean you, Mike, you know, I think, you know, the risk to you is not the same as risk to you performing your job.

The risk to you is you performing your job wrong and you don't have a job, right? So I think we all end up with that personal manager, you know, Arthur c Clark's last book there, you know, the, the, you know, the main character has a AI manager, right? And I think we get that.

That reminds us, me, Chris, the person to, when I go to work, make sure I have, you know, to Andy, to your point, that governance layer to do my job so that my real manager, my real ai, my personal ai, you know, keeps getting its monthly subscription paid. And I, and I live indoors. So I, I have a theory on this.

We're really early in this AI agent and everybody's rushing to market. 'cause they wanna have their own AI agent. Every app has to have their own AI agent.

Everybody wants to have an agent. And we all know that that is not practical. I think where we're going to, and, and most of these agents, by the way, are relatively one trick ponies.

They do one thing, right? They do one thing. They, they, they schedule this, they find that they, you know, they check a box.

Those agents are going to become ephemeral, right? 'cause they don't need to be running necessarily all the time. It's just when you're going to do something, I think where we're, where we're going to go to is we are going have, Chris, you want to use the Arthur Clark, or not Arthur Clark analogy.

A an AI agent manager, an AI that manages our agents. And that manager spins up ephemeral instances of different, let's call them sub-agents, that do a particular job and then dissolve back into the woodwork, right? And that master agent, if you will, is smart enough to know when to spin up these alter egos that do it a particular thing.

So that we don't need to have two dozen different agents. Someone like, and, and all of us are power users on computers. We work in tech, right?

We don't need two different, two dozen different agents for the, the, I mean, how many apps do you have on your phone? If you're like me, you have probably a hundred apps on your phone. So you need a hundred agents on your phone.

No. How often do you use those apps? So we're gonna have a master agent that spins up ephemeral, sub-agents, disposable agents, one time use agents, Harry Shavers, whatever you want to call 'em.

And they do the, they do the job and they go back and they go away. And the next time you need it, it spins it up again. That's probably a gen two or gen three thing right now where in the, I can't get enough agents mode, but that's gonna quickly pass too, right?

As we're overwhelmed with too many agents, All the marketing people are gonna object to the word master. But I get your point. One's gonna be kind of the senior head butler maybe, and the other one's are all kinda working.

Well, it's one agent to rule them off. But, but you won't have all of these agents, because I'm sorry, I'm begging a lot of noise. You, you won't have all of these agents because not all the tasks that these agents are doing are worthy of a standalone agent.

We let, let's call, I don't know if you want to call 'em sub-agents, ephemeral agents, disposable agents. I, I don't care. But you, you're not going to need an a, an a, a, a permanent agent for most of the things that the agents are doing.

You, you spin 'em up and down. I, I wanna be clear about like, responsibility here. So if the company gives me an agent to perform a task and the agent screws it up, is it my fault or is it the company's fault?

It's still your fault. It's never the company's fault. It's always your fault, Mike.

You've been here at Textron for how long? It's always your fault. No, seriously.

Uh, it, it's the same thing at the cloud. The cloud gives you an instance that you spun up, but when, when your data gets breached, it's your problem, right? And, and, you know, then, so falling back on my, my legal background, an agent is an agent, hence the word agent creating agency.

And when, when you in employ an agent, whether it be a digital agent or a people agent, you bear liability for that agent's actions. So yes, it's your fault. So do we think we're gonna see more to that point?

Do we think we're gonna see more upper level leaders getting insurance on themselves in the job? Like that's gonna be something they ask for. If they take a CEO position of some big tech company, or they're using a lot of ai, they're gonna ask for insurance for themselves.

Well, so like boards of directors and officers always already have e and o insurance for the most part, right There is in omissions. Um, and that's pretty standard. I I don't know if we'll extend EO to include, um, um, agent or agentic malfeasance or what have you, but, um, or negligence.

But I mean, you know, why not? So it might be an easier conversation though, because when something does go wrong and it's actually Andy's fault, I won't say it's Andy's fault. I'll say Andy's agent screwed up and therefore, you know, it's, it's, it's less tense conversation, right?

Yeah. It's it's gonna have to happen though, isn't it? I mean, the responsibility for automation has always been with the automator.

Um, and you're absolutely right Alan. You talk about cloud, we think of cloud as someone else's computers, but ultimately you are always responsible for your own actions in the cloud or on premises. And we've seen this before as well.

Clouds providers go down and your general consumer is not angry at Amazon or Azure. They're angry at you for not providing the service you said you would. So look, it doesn't really matter where the agent lives or the responsibility.

We are gonna have to be responsible for our actions. 'cause we're gonna be responsible to our customers who will blame us anyway. So sure, take it on the chin, get ready, get insurance, maybe up your insurance.

I know when we went to cloud, a lot of people did up that e and o insurance. A because of the extended risk, we're gonna face more extended risk with ai. Why wouldn't you up your insurance on that if you can?

Uh, it's 'cause we're gonna find breaches. We're gonna find insiders, agentic, breaches. This is just the start of all sorts of stuff, Alan.

Not just the management, but also the penetration vectors. I'm sorry, I can no longer provide you with insurance 'cause you're too much of a risk. So we're just pulling it, you know, Again, Mike, I I just gotta say Alan, with your ephemeral agents, has me thinking, and I think we probably need to start thinking about agents as a service, which on the one hand, you know, maybe an actual thing.

On the other hand, it's an acronym that, uh, once you pronounce it will be fun. Yes. Well, well, I I don't think we're going to go with that particular acronym, Chris, something tells me.

But, um, we'll, we'll, we'll see where we go from there. Anyway, hey, we've spent 20 minutes on this one. We gotta jump to our next block.

Let's take a quick break here. Our Techron gang, we'll come back with more Discover Techron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation. We are your go-to for reaching IT leaders and practitioners worldwide.

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Let's revolutionize your tech journey. Contact us today and tell your story to the world in the most powerful way with Textron Group. Hey folks, we're back and we're moving on to talk about what's going on with Apple, which has, uh, indefinitely delayed.

Its, uh, upgrades for Siri and everybody's kind of scratching their head what that means. 'cause maybe Gen AI and Siri are incompatible, who knows? But Amanda, what's your take on what's going on here?

Yeah, it seems, we we're hearing about them a lot lately. They seem to be struggling with their AI offerings in general, kind of the last to come in with their AI offerings in the first place. So I wonder what is their approach or why is it so different?

Uh, I know it's gonna require more power. According to the article, what they're trying to do with their AI is gonna require more power. That's part of the struggle.

Um, but either way, they seem to have been struggling to compete in the AI offerings in general. And I wonder if we're gonna see this in phone adoption with their, their new phone if people are gonna be switching to another phone that already has all the cool AI features. Mm-hmm.

I wonder if this will also be an issue for other people like Samsung, because maybe to your point, there isn't enough horsepower on the phones to run this stuff locally, so it doesn't work as well as it should and can't make everything a call the cloud. So have we reached some sort of, uh, technical impasse here that just needs another generation of processors? Andy, your guess is as good as mine?

Yeah, look, I think, I'm not a consumerist, I'm obviously an enterprise person, but from my perspective, what I see is, uh, they don't wanna repeat the Apple Maps fiasco, right? Um, they want to get it right. If you remember when they brought out Apple Maps to compete with Google Maps, all of a sudden people were driving off freeways into driving off overpasses and into canals and so forth, right?

Uh, apple can't afford to do that. Now. They've gotta have trust.

And you know, Amanda spoke about this earlier on today. You know, your trust in AI is super important. And so for, at the consumer level, especially, you know, at the enterprise level, we can try things out and iterate and so forth and so on.

At consumer level, we don't have AB testing. We buy devices and use them. If they're no good, we throw 'em away and get something else.

So I think they've gotta get it right. And I think there's a lot of challenges. I think you're really spot on when you talk about the processing power on system.

You know, I'm working right now on some things around voice control with local response using an LLM, and it requires pretty significant processing for some very basic command structures. If you want to get real ai, gen, ai, genetic ai, whatever it is into a phone, yeah, you're gonna have to do some pretty interesting stuff. So maybe as they continue to develop their chip set, by the way, the M1 and two, that these are amazingly fast and powerful chip sets doing some of that work on the phone, maybe that's what we're looking for in the next jam.

So look, I'll, I'll remind you all that. Siri doesn't just work on iPhone. Siri works on Macintosh, on your MacBook Pros on your Mac studios and, and there's plenty of horsepower on those machines.

So I, I don't know if it's a horsepower issue. I think the bigger issue, and I'll, I'm going to call the elephant in the room out, you know, the knock on Apple is, since Tim Cook came in, they, they, they're not innovating. And quite frankly, they've been late to the AI game, quite frankly.

They have been through other people's ai, right? They deal with open AI because they were using the open AI stuff. They've been, they out of the, you know, you look at the Mag seven and, and you know, in my mind the big four of that Apple competes with its Apple meta Google, Microsoft or Big Five Amazon.

I think Apple, apple has trailed the, their competitors there in a, uh, in native AI adoption. And now they're trying to build it into Siri because look, Siri should have been in AI to begin with. We thought it was, I guess at the time.

And, and they're stumbling with it. They, they were late to market. They were late to do it, and they continued to have trouble.

Let's not, I don't blame this on horsepower. I I don't, this is gonna take some innovation and some new new ways of looking at things for Apple, doing different things, maybe out of their box and they're not doing it well, plain and simple. And I think it's a pretty interesting point, Alan.

Um, you know, the, the, the idea that Apple is an innovator has always been, I'm gonna get in trouble in a moment now. Uh, 'cause I don't think they've been an innovator since, was really, I mean, the iPhone was late to the market. Siri was late to the market.

Um, they were already late to market with ai Maps was late to the market. Um, they spent a lot of money trying to do, drive self driving cars, and then sold that unit off. Um, I would posit that Apple is not designed as an innovator.

Apple is designed as a fast follower and has been super successful in that mode. So that's actually a really interesting idea, Al and maybe not a bad thing for them. Yeah, I, you know, I've, I've been, you know, we've been in an Alexa household rather than a Siri household, you know, in, in this generation.

And as you know, I mean, I, I run, I control lights and pumps and water cannons on boats and so forth. And I think there's, I think you're probably, you know, what you're saying, all saying about, uh, apple is probably true enough. But Andy, what you're saying, you know, these devices, you know, what we talk about as AI these days, you know, the last segment we're talking about agents, you know, what does it actually take?

And whatever the answer is, I think, you know, our experience, I know my experience with these devices over these last, what it five, seven years, what, what not, and our expectations now are that it acts like chat GPT, and it does not. It's dumb as a stump. And if Google and Apple with all their resources can make these devices, those of us who embedded smart, there's a reason.

And then, you know, maybe it's incompetence at some level, but I think we we're going to have expected more out of our little local devices, um, than we do, than we have. I think we're starting to expect that now, right? We're suddenly in the six 40 K world, it's like, you remember when we just had the six 40 k and we thought that was great?

Yeah, I think that's the Syrian, uh, Alexa sort of infrastructure we have right now. We're gonna look back as, as eight bit eighties, you know, stuff. Are you telling me that Apple intelligence is the latest oxymoron?

Is that where we're going with this? Big corporations and big governments and, you know, big organizations. I, I agree with Andy.

It's hard for them to innovate. You know, that's not really their job so much. Um, and they can screw up what remains their job.

And I think they, they all do that with alacrity as well, but I think this is a more fundamental sort of shift. Yeah. So Amazon is supposed to be rolling out a big Alexa upgrade.

Speaking of Alexa, that has a lot more ai. I think it'll be interesting to see if they fumble that one as well, or if that goes a little smoother here than what's going on with Apple. No, I I, here's what's gonna happen is that there'll be an dedicated Apple watch.

It'll be a co-processor for the al workloads that will sit on your other rest, and you'll have to buy both of them And the chain between them as well. Or is that optional? You know, And your master agent will control it all.

Maybe we need a, you know, we'll call him Hobbes or something from, from the Arthur movie. Uh, anyway, all right, well, you know, I, I think the Apple AI conundrum though is bigger than Siri. And it's funny, as I said this, looking over at my iPhone, I'm getting those pretty, uh, neon lights sliding up when Apple Intelligence kicks in.

It hears me talking about it. It doesn't zap me with a laser or something. But, um, the fact is Apple, apple has to show their chops in ai.

If you believe AI is where we're all going. And, you know, that's the, the, the, the indi indispensable element. It's more than AI and Siri.

It's AI and Apple. Where is it in the os? Where is it in their apps?

Where is it in everything they're doing? And, you know, apple Intelligence may not be in oxymoron just yet, but I don't see any, you know, I, I've been running the beta since they came out with this Apple intelligence, and I run it on my Mac, I run it on my phone, I run it on my iPads, I run it on my Apple TV and my watch, and I haven't seen a damn thing. So I don't know.

Well, I, I think, you know, ball's in their court And I wonder, Alan, if we're running up against use cases and validation and product market fit for Apple as well, right? They've been running these ads about Apple intelligence for the longest time. Is no one getting excited at the use cases they're showing?

Are they trying to find product market fit? You know, Google's running ads as well for, you know, set up my appointments for me with my friends that go to dinner. I, we know that doesn't work.

So maybe we're looking for product market fit. Well, But, but so that's not just an Apple issue though, right? That is.

So what is the killer app for ai? Right? Question.

I, uh, if give me funding and I'll find out, uh, this is the sort of thing you, well, I Think right now you just gotta make an agent and you can get funding. But what is the killer app for ai? This is something I, you know, I I, I did a YouTube shirt on this about a month ago now, where Mark Cuban says that the world's first trillionaire, if, if you believe that the Saudi family is not already trillionaires and everything else, um, that the world's first trillionaire will not be Jeff Bezos or Elon or, or, or Zuckerberg.

But it'll be the, the person who makes the killer app for AI uses it in a way we, we haven't quite figured out yet. And they'll make a trillion dollars. 2 million views.

So people are definitely interested in that. I think they're more interested in billionaires. Anyway, hey, let's take a break here on Textron.

We're gonna come back and, uh, you know, how's your 401k doing? com is the leading resource for news analysis and education on challenges facing the cybersecurity industry. com covers all aspects of cybersecurity, including data security, DevSecOps, cloud security, application security, network security, security threats, and more.

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Home of security bloggers network. Hey folks, we're back for Steve Locke and we're gonna talk now about, well, what's going on on Wall Street. And as anybody has seen this week, it's been a bit bumpy, shall we say, at least in the wrong direction for a lot of folks.

And who knows if it will recover or not. But, um, Alan, what's your take on what's going on here? 'cause it seems like outside of the fact that we had some, you know, sharp downturns this week, the whole trend has been in the wrong direction, Right?

Again, I may never be able to retire at this rate. My 401k is becoming a 2 0 2. Uh, so it, it's, it's, it's kinda scary.

But, but here's the thing, right? Market people tell you, you can't watch it day to day. You gotta look at trends you gotta look at, you know, and the traditional rule of thumb is if you have a fall of more than 10%, it's truly a correction.

If you have a fall of more than 20%, it's, it's, it's a downright crash. Well, you know, since our glorious leader came into power at the end of January, uh, we're in correction territory. And you know, this is from the guy who promised us that the eggs are gonna go down, your stocks are gonna go up, and everything else is gonna be willy-nilly and happy.

Happy. Mm-hmm. So, Andy, does this kind of cycle perpetuate itself a little bit?

'cause you know, what happens is companies pull in their horns, then they stop funding meat projects, and then it all starts to cascade downwards. And, um, do we need to take a pause here at some point? Or how do we, you know, what's your sense of how this might all kinda maybe reverse itself?

Well, I hope it does reverse itself. 'cause I'm not about, you got my, my 401k is becoming a 4 0 4 K, right? It's just investment not found.

Uh, this is definitely gonna have to correct at some point, but look, I don't know that this is fundamental. It's certainly not within tech stocks. Yes, there is some fundamental pressure around, uh, there's been layoffs in order to retool for ai.

There's been, we've seen from so many of the, from the fangs we talked about earlier, uh, and many, many others, there's been a lot of retooling to gear up to free up the opex for AI investment. And that's not insignificant. We're literally seeing hundreds of thousands of tech workers in Silicon Valley and related industries out of, you know, obviously New York, Chicago, Boston, et cetera, coming out in the streets.

And that's dropping spending power, it's dropping confidence. Um, and you know, there's a lot of administrative action happening at federal level as well, obviously causing uncertainty. And, you know, you talk about, uh, administration leaders being comfortable with the word recession.

Uh, that's sort of a new attitude. So look, is it gonna correct? I it always does.

When will it correct is probably the big thing. And what will drive that correction? I don't think this is fundamental, certainly within tech, but there are some fundamentals that are not helping, uh, certainly in terms of employment and spending power of those tech workers.

Guys, this is not just tech. Let's be clear. This is not just tech.

This is the entire market. And, and here's the reason I, I've said this before I think on the show, but I'll say it again here. Do you know what the market hates the most uncertainty?

And do you know what the very definition of a Trump administration is? Chaos. Chaos is uncertainty.

And when you have uncertainty the market, it gets real skittish, real skittish. So it's not, yes, the, we, we get hurt in tech and, and look the magnificent seven, and, and the Nasdaq is such a big part of many of our portfolios for 401k and and so forth. But the fact of the matter is the entire market abhors uncertainty.

And you've got an administration that is the very definition of uncertainty, day to day, minute by minute, moment by moment. And if the market doesn't feel secure, it, this is the, this is what happens. And you know, hindsight is usually 2020, but unfortunately in this country, and during the last election cycle, people put on rose colored nostalgic glasses thinking about what the economy was under the first Trump presidency.

It sucked. It sucked. And then Covid really made it suck.

And we, we got outta there with net losses of jobs and everything else, and you could say what you want about Joe Biden and how old he was, but he, he did what he could to restore it. And it was handed over in a solid inflation back down to 2% joblessness down low, even the deficits, they were trying to do some things with, let's, let's, let's rip off the rose colored glasses and call it what it was. This man's a menace, this administration's a menace.

And let's, well, and this is what the market is reacting to, and it's a worldwide market. It's not just the us. Well, and let, let me, you know, think through some fundamentals of that.

'cause you, you, you're, you're exactly right, Alan, you know, the, yeah. Markets are, as we know, they're emotional. Like how comfortable do I feel?

But there are reasons for that, right? And just, uh, I just wrote a piece this, uh, this morning about the, uh, some changes in ISACs, the information sharing analysis centers, and since the nineties have been public private centers to share threat intelligence and protect, you know, uh, uh, the nation in various ways. But in many ways it's by lowering the cost, you know, because, you know, the in, in this case, the multi-state isac, which was con congressionally funded, um, has had his funding pulled.

And that most ISACs are the private sector. So, you know, you have members who are, you know, for-profit companies, they pay some dues. You fund the whole thing.

The multi-state isac, uh, was unique, you know, you know, past tense now was unique because it had the, you know, state, local, tribal, you know, if you're the mayor of some small town, you know, you can belong to this. And you can find out that there is, for example, you know, active cyber threats that are attacking, you know, infrastructure that you have so you can plan in advance and save time, money, yeah. Yes, be more secure, but also, you know, reduce your, your odds of needing the insurance and the recovery.

And if you are, you know, your traffic lights suddenly start working. You had somewhere to go to say, Hey, you know, is that a thing? And find out, yes, it is a thing, here's what you do.

So again, save time and money in getting your traffic lights working again after being hacked. So we have this combination of uncertainty, as you say, was a characteristic of the current administration and actual losses, you know, actual costs introduced into the systems that that cost, that take money away from other activity. Hmm.

You know, what needs to be called out too though, is all these folks who are announcing layoffs and then attributing it to ai. There's just no way that the AI has that advanced that yet to really justify that level of layoff. So what you're really saying is, yeah, AI has probably had a, some impact here and there, but we really just screwed up and we're hiding it behind ai.

So let's just call it as it is. I will say though, I just wanna point out that, as Andy mentioned it, the market always corrects itself and eventually we always see an upward line over a period of time. So now I'm not a professional, you know, financial advisor, but I'm saying, bye bye buy at a low rate.

Well, that, you know, that there's a theory of you buy on the dips and you buy low and you dollar cost average your stuff. Here's the problem, Amanda, if we were all your age, I'd say, yeah, yeah, yippy y yay. But when you look at the demographics of the us, more people are closer to Andy, Mike, Chris, and I, and those people don't have five to 10 to 15 years for this correction to correct itself.

Okay? And, and so it's important to them. And, and yes, when we look at the s and p market over the last, let's say the s and p over the last 80 or a hundred years, it averages, I dunno, 3% a year or three and a half percent a year, something like that.

We had a great four years this, these past four years in the market for the most part. Um, but I don't have 80 years for this to, to, you know, what you're losing now is really gonna hurt people. And then you have the twin concern of how are we gonna pay for our social security, Medicaid, Medicare, giving government, the current government here.

And then, you know, things start getting real ugly, real quick, real ugly, like take to the streets, ugly, take it to the streets. And I will say, Amanda, it's a good, it's a good plan. And Alan, you're right.

Buy on the dip. The one thing that I'd point out, you know, and certainly the oligarchs are gonna do that, right? The one thing I'd point out is if you're not making the market, you are at the whim of the market.

So yeah, you can try and buy on the dip. Um, and you know, if you're gonna do that good on you, you could potentially make out really well, like you say, Alan, if you've got time to let that fester and, and grow, uh, over time and correct, but you gotta pick the right winners. And if you are not making the market, uh, I don't know that I'm gonna pick the right women's.

So what I heard Alan say is that the Textron gang will be broadcasting for the next 20 years, even if it's from a nursing home. Is that what you're saying? Well, No, what I think I may have to do is just upload my consciousness to an AI and, and it'll be out there in perpetuity, you know, earning money, whatever.

Uh, it's, it's, it's a scary thing. Look, you know, let's be realistic. Some of us have done well, but the majority of Americans, you know, who are invested, I mean, pensions aren't, unless you're a government worker and there's fewer and fewer of them every day thanks to feelers leader, um, you don't have a pension.

You have, if you're lucky, you have a 4 0 1, a 401k if you're lucky, maybe your employer matches your contribution and so forth. And most 4 0 1 Ks, you're not playing individual stocks, you're making broad bets. You're betting, you're investing in QQQ, right?

The, the NASDAQ Index Fund, you're investing in an s and p fund, you're investing in, uh, in a small cap fund, a large cap fund, aggressive, you know, but they're general, their funds. And, and so you don't, you are, you are betting, you are in this, you're in the zebra herd, right? And your, and your investment goes as well as the herd goes.

You're not a maverick, right? And, and so as Andy says, if you're not a maker, you're a sheep and, and you're, you know, some sheep gets slaughtered. Wait, it's only a matter of time before all those manufacturing jobs come back to the US and we're fully employed again, and consumer sentiment will just skyrocket back up again.

Come on. That's right, Mike. That's right.

Yeah. I didn't know we were doing standup. Oh, man, I haven't got my type five, mike mine.

That's right. Yep, yep, yep. But look, you know, one thing about the market, it is fickle.

It is fickle. Maybe, maybe you get a, some peace deal in the Middle East or, or the Ukraine and Russia situation. Uh, I don't know.

China does something. I, I mean, there are, you, you never know, right? And, and that's part of living in chaos.

So if you're sitting in Canada or China, and you know, and, and then as the president describes it, this is the biggest market and the most coveted market in the world. But if consumer sentiment is down, the market is down, people are spending less than you have less leverage to negotiate on tariffs, right? So individually, it's a very big market.

My fear is that Europe says, you know what? We don't need this. We'll go do deals with China, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, we don't need this.

We'll go do deals with China. It don't take much China plus to, to, it's not even close. What's a big market, right?

Because one could say China's a bigger market right now anyway, but you do China plus Europe, China plus Canada, Mexico, Europe plus Canada, Mexico and Brazil, Europe plus India. I mean, we're, it, it's a global, we are way past, this isn't 1953, and Eisenhower isn't the president where the US dominates the world market anymore. It doesn't, we, that's not who, that's not what the world is anymore, right?

Everyone in this world wants to live an American lifestyle in terms of being a consumer. And every, almost every country tries to give their people that consumer lifestyle, right? They don't want to be America per se, but they want that American lifestyle, right?

There's, I, I've, Thomas Friedman in his flat Earth series writes about this a lot, and you know, there's a lot of countries in the world that are giving people that American lifestyle Plus. And Alan, I'll tell you all from a global perspective, there's a reason I am here. Uh, you know, I listen to my accent.

This is my Colorado accent, right? I've come a long way to be here and enjoy that American experience, right? I've sacrificed a lot and hopefully contributed some, but I will tell you, you're exactly right.

But Asia especially is no stranger to China. Australia has been trading with China as our most favored nation for the longest time. I, I believe for a long time China was actually our biggest export partner, especially around coal, steel resources.

And you look at, uh, Asia Pacific generally, and look, this is a game of brinkmanship that could end up very, very poorly, exactly as you say, because star, I would start in Asia where there are already somewhere like two and a half billion people, and you talk about markets, India, Indonesia, China, that's like half the world's population right there. And if they align with China as they already are, there's a lot of sentiment there, which is that China is a positive influence in the region. We don't always look at that from our perspective here in the States.

And so there's a game of brinkmanship that could end up very, very poorly already, China has been pressuring trading partners to not use US dollars. Now, if we start to talk about petro dollars and Euro dollars and uh, uh, petro euros or whatever you'd call it, ooh, wow. If America stops becoming the reserve currency of the world, then we're in a whole different perspective.

Well, I've been, I've been tracking Bitcoin long few days. And look, if you think your portfolio's bad, just track Bitcoin the last week and a half. Oh my goodness.

I'm glad I'm not long. Crazy. Anyway, hey, we've got a call, a break.

I, I, I'm not in the studio, as you could probably tell. I'm up in Orlando at Ska and I've gotta go hear what's going on in the world, world of Linux and AI and Cloud Native. So, um, I'll be here all week, but I'll be on the gang.

I'm gonna try to get Mitch's here with me. Mitch Ashley, we're gonna try to do a report from Suka for gang either tomorrow or Thursday. Um, but until then, Andy, always a pleasure.

Chris, great to see you smooth sailing as they say me, that wouldn't be at your back. Amanda, Mike has always thank you. Thank you for watching.

We've got a full Textron TV schedule immediately following, so stay tuned for that. But for now, this Alan Shimmel for Text Drunk Gang. We're out.