Techstrong Gang – March 7, 2025

Hey everyone. It's another AI Friday. You're watching Textron Gang.

Hi everyone. Alan Shimmel here on Textron Gang. Welcome to our Friday edition.

We've got our usual kind of Friday crowd here. They've become the regulars on Friday. I feel like I'm Sam and cheers, or maybe I'm coach and cheer.

Cheers. Uh, Mike could beem. He, he, he was a pitcher.

Um, but let me introduce you to our gang members. Our West Coast in Inte. On Friday is our marketing person extraordinaire, expert radio host, and a bunch of other good stuff.

Our friend Lisa Martin. Hey Lisa. You're looking very, very nice in that top there.

Well, thank you. I'm very bright today. It's good.

Pink and white is always a nice color. Um, moving on from Lisa. He's not in pink and white.

Looks like he's, oh, he is. Got a little red. I thought you were in your Warriors.

Your dubs warmup suit or something out there? Uh, John Schwartz. Hey John, how are you?

Hey, I'm good. I'm good. It's, uh, being kept busy by the Salesforce conference this week, but, uh, everything's good.

Very cool. Good for you. Okay, then moving from the West coast to Austin.

Same guy, different title. That's right. Mm-hmm.

I'm now Chief analyst at Visible Impact Guy Courier Chief Analyst at Visible Impact. Hey guy, welcome Visible Impact, part of the Future Room Group. Thanks.

I'm actually in New York City. Are you at the moment? Oh, I you.

Lucky dog. You good for you. Thank you.

You're not with ard, with Mike, are you? Uh, I don't know. Mike, which office are you in?

I'm in, I'm in the Harrison, New York office on the other side of the bridge from you. And we were just discussing our future locations. Well, that's cool.

Very cool. I'm in Midtown Manhattan right now. Good for you.

Enjoy. Welcome guy. And then of course from Harrison.

He is the dean of, of, uh, Jack Strong, our Chief Content Officer, Mike Ard. Mike, did you always wanna be a dean? Dean?

I don't know, because, you know, that's a lot of responsibility for taking care of students and students are notoriously problematic. So, yeah, I think I'll skip the dean. All right.

Like I was thinking more like Dean Wormer, you know, have a, i a husband Dean Wormer, But, but I am in the same room I was in yesterday and I haven't moved since. So. There you go.

There You are. Alright guys. Hey, it's Friday.

We, we got a lot of AI in store for us here. Uh, Mike, why don't you kick us off. We're gonna take a minute here on this a block to, um, assess where we are with ai.

There's a story over on digital CXO talking about how, um, AI has permeated everybody's thought process, even though it seems like not that many folks are actually doing it just yet. And a lot of those things they are doing are experiments. And John has a story also up on, uh, tech Strong AI talking about how just about every job in the world now seems to have an AI component to it, if you wanna apply for it.

So, let's start with Guy, but what's your assessment of what's going on here? Where are we on this journey? Well, the story at digital, uh, digital CXO, could I get that right?

Um, is, uh, um, based on, um, a recent study by the St. Louis Fed of 10,000 US workers. Um, and it's interesting to me for you to say, Mike, that, um, not a lot of people are using it because I guess the headline number was like 23%, uh, of a US workers, uh, use ai, uh, on a weekly basis.

Um, 9% use it on a daily basis. Those numbers don't sound like a lot, but I'm here to tell you those numbers are astoundingly high. 23% of all US workers, I, I think they had an age cutoff of like between 23 and 65 or something like that.

But every kind of job imaginable from farm worker up to corporate CEO, 23% of them are using AI at least weekly. That is astounding adoption. If you ask me if you wanna cut it down just to knowledge workers, I didn't have a chance to look at that.

Maybe it's a higher number of 50% or more, but this is every US worker. And, uh, equally interesting is that over half of the usage of AI is employee driven according to the study. I mean, this is a serious, uh, projectable, um, uh, you know, sort of unassailable piece of market research by one of the premier research institutions in the United States.

The, the us, the, uh, St. Louis, uh, federal Bank. Um, and they're, they're showing the, the latest version or edition of BYO.

What f we had BYOD. Um, we sort of kind of had BYO cloud, although it wasn't our name that way. This is now BYO ai.

Hey, I just coined it. BBYO ai, um, over half of its use is employee driven. That's all.

And you know, everyone in sundry, um, going and using chat GBT to for whatever, for research to draft an email or what have you. I mean, this, this is in a space of two years now. Um, there's one other element to this story having to do, do with productivity, but actually I wanted to hear from John also because he has taken this sort of, you know, work style lifestyle, uh, approach and some recent articles he's written about it.

And I wanna see what his take is on my sort of astonishment at, at How I, I think you, I think you're spot on guy. And, and in fact, I think that number 23% not only is, is pretty significant. I think it's gonna get higher very soon.

So as part of the story that I did, um, there was a, a study done by the University of Maryland's, uh, Smith School of Business in a, a company called linkup, which is a data job fracking firm. And they have found that since the end of 2022, the AI job listings in the US are up 68%. When you compare that to the overall job listings or postings, those have declined 17%.

So in a sense, that's where the jobs are. And in fact, there was yet another study that was done, uh, looking at a thousand jo recent job seekers by something called AI Resume Builder. And they discovered that nearly half of the applicants now use chat GPT to craft their resume and cover letters.

And that the people who did do that 82% were able to get some form of an interview. Um, they, they, one cautionary thing is you, you couldn't over rely on using chat GPT. You had to add a human element of some sort.

Otherwise, it was very obvious that you hadn't written it. But I, I think just given the whole context of what's going on on, it's very interesting to me. So we have this AI job growth that's occurring at the same time that a lot of tech companies are slashing their workforces, and yet they're making major investments in ai.

It's just, it, there's this kind of whole kind of interesting dynamic that I find that as companies are cutting back, they're also looking to hire more people to fill the gap in the AI or some sort of knowledge, which in a sense, ironically, will probably displace even more jobs. So there's this kind of whole job churning cycle that's going on. But AI is definitely leading the pack.

And, um, I think I, I think we're really gonna see significant change. And this, this will probably bleed into our next segment about what's going on with the Gen ai, but I think it really is starting to take off. I was a little bit dubious about it, but now I'm starting to think there really is momentum go coming from this area.

I'm gonna say nonsense. So here's the thing, I'm employees are driving it, no doubt, 23%, no doubt. And I'm willing and wage you that 95% of that 23% is using it to write a better memo.

Well, let me wait to see how the GDP is gonna really take off because people are writing a better memo. I don't disagree that AI is gonna have a profound impact, but we're a long, long way from actually people using that in a meaningful way that's gonna drive a, a return on investment. And you're already here, CX os sanding around going, where is the ROI on this stuff?

Well, I have to mention that the, uh, the St. Louis Fed did their homework using data from the study and, um, pretty sophisticated analysis, uh, to, uh, come up with a figure or how many work hours are being saved each week, or not each week, sorry, it's independent of the time period. 4% of work hours are being saved.

4% of a 40 hour work week is, uh, what it's, uh, 25 minutes or something like that. So that doesn't really sound like a lot, but those are 25 minutes that are being, let's take them at face value, which I do have a fair amount of, you know, doubt about that number much as I have confidence in the St. Louis Fed.

But let's just take that at face value. And those 25 minutes are now being spent to do something else. 1% or something like that.

When you do the math, that is a big boost in productivity. It doesn't sound like a lot, but you, you, you get that productivity boost, Mike. And, um, I, I think the main doubt is that the methodology is really sound enough, especially when you're interviewing these folks and they're saying, oh, I say four hours a week, and you're just kinda like, okay, you know, uh, maybe not.

They're, you know, I have been one of the ones saying over and over again that AI isn't really a productivity booster, at least not yet. It is a quality booster liability booster. But this is the sort of thing that people can look at now and start doing measurement with.

That'll be a great comfort to me on the 10 hours a week I'm now spending, going back into the office and commuting each way that I I, that makes a huge difference right here, man. I got you. So It sounds, sounds wore your cynic hat again, sounds To me like, I mean, we're, we're basically though in a transition in transitionary period, it's starting to ramp up.

I think it's not gonna happen overnight, obviously, but I think it's, we're definitely trending in this direction, you know, and I've, I've been skeptical about it, but I, I really do see some sort of progress going on. It's just not gonna happen as quickly as we think. So it sounds to me like the dean's putting him on double secret probation And, and should do.

One of the claims is, is so, you know, I I didn't want to, I I am not going to trash this study or what the St. Louis Fed did. I'm gonna read it.

I think it's gonna be very useful. But one of the claims in, in, in, again, in the article, I'm not sure if it came out of the report or, or somewhere else, um, or an interpretation, but it's that, uh, CIOs who successfully formalize AI integration could, and that word could, is doing a lot of business, could unlock $200 billion or more in annual productivity gains. And that's not walking around money.

That's, that's a fair Amount of billion here. A billionaire, before you know it, you're talking real money, But yeah. And I look at that number and I'm just like, come on.

So, Well, that's across the board. But, but hear, hear me out. I, to your point, Mike, if people are using it to polish up or speed up writing memos, making a better cover letter, resume, these, what they're doing is they're using AI to try to make their mundane faster, easier, better.

And that's a worthy, that's nothing to shirk at. It's a worthy goal. But the real AI gains are when we use AI to really accelerate beyond the mundane writing a memo or, you know, these tasks, but you know what, what we really expect it to do, which is to do go, go do things, right?

Agent ai, go take care of this, take care of that, write that code this, deploy this, right? When it, it starts becoming a digital workforce, not just, I, I think out of the 23% who use it now, 80% of that 23% view it as a, a really nice parlor trick. A really ni look at it's magical look how great this thing is.

Look, I I, I'm talking about myself even, you know, it amazes me what it comes up with and stuff, but I'm not really leveraging it as a digital workforce. And I think that's the, the switch that needs to flip. You know, you, you know, I was, can I, can I just interject something really quickly?

Is that when I used to work, when I used to work at Dow Jones, one of my greatest frustrations was we did this formulary formulaic stories around earnings, which I hated to do. And it took up a great amount. Jesus, it took up so much time, and I thought if only if AI came along and did that could free me up to do stuff that I really wanted to do that I thought would add incredible value.

So I actually think, and I can actually see how this was, would work in the future. But anyway, I'm just saying this from selfish purposes. I tell you to Alan's point, and I think Satya Nadella has it, right, he said, you know, the only metric that's gonna matter at the end of the day is whether or not these GD Ps start moving up.

And we really are more productive that otherwise, to Alan's point, it's a nifty little parlor trick. And yeah, it reduces my toil maybe, and I am less cranky as a result, but it doesn't really mean squat to the business. It just means me as an employee means I can I get to go to lunch a little bit more and not have to rush back.

That's where we are. Wait a second. Can I take a quick poll of our panel today?

Is Mike A. Little less cranky than he was before? I think we're seeing a change in Tide, Ellen.

All Right. All right. All right.

Well then look, spring training, that's a worthy goal. Oh, So worthy go. I keep, I, Go ahead, Lisa.

Oh, thanks guy. I'm a big fan of generative AI for, for sparking creativity. You know, one of the things I talked about last week on the radio was, was this overreliance on gen AI from students and teachers are getting really savvy to, to check them out.

They're putting, like, like a student is, is relying on an ages between 17 and 25. And the reliant versus, um, using it are completely different things to me. And it showed that that students were copying and pasting like, like an essay prompt into like a chat GPT and having it write the entire thing and being reliant on it, completely.

Not even proofreading it for hallucinations or putting that human element in. I think that guy that you mentioned, teachers are getting savvy because they are hiding words like a funny word, like a banana that doesn't make any sense to the actual essay prompt in white text. When you copy and paste the prompt into a chatbot and that word appears, the teacher knows right away you cheated.

But we're seeing also a lot of knowledge workers reliant on it. I think that the fine line there is reliance dependence versus using it as an inspiration tool. Something that the, the study showed me was that CIOs have to get really, they've gotta balance this tightrope as the article said about preventing hallucinations these, putting these guardrails in place, letting people be creative and more productive.

But I also thought it was interesting that we're seeing, I guess this is not surprising that we're seeing gen AI adoption different across industries, but I was impressed to see that that, you know, 15% of leisure and hospitality folks, knowledge workers are using it, transportation workers. It's not just the information services and the professional services folks. We're seeing that, I think what, what needs to be put in place is those guardrails saying this can be used to, I think, as an inspiration tool versus being overly dependent on it.

That if you're writing it for a resume or a cover letter and you're not putting in any, any of your own sort of touch, I think you're gonna get rejected regardless. That's a terrific way, that's a terrific way to to, to, to describe that quality side that I talk about. That's an inspiration tool.

I love that little comment about banana. I think we all need an AI safe word. Mine's.

Mine's gonna be beer. Mine's getting strawberry, and my family knows what that means. How can I just point out for, again, Where do we go in here?

Go ahead. It's, it's really, it's gonna be really helpful for us, Mike, especially you, and this will cheer you up to think of this and the article alludes to this, but I've seen nowhere else except coming outta my own dang pie hole, which is to think of this adoption curve and adoption cycle of AI as the same way as the adoption of the personal PC back starting in the early eighties. It took 16 years before any productivity gains were seen from the use of personal PCs and devices.

It's clear that this will be a lot shorter, but, but shorter, what, four years or something. So Mike, that's what I have to say to your complaints about there not being productivity gains. I, which is not even what we should be using AI for anyway.

So I Am, I'm a big believer in the long term, but the short term is a lot of hype and a lot of, Where, where did we go off the rails here? Where we're talking about safe words and pie holes? That's what I, that's strawberry.

Alright, Let's take a break. We're gonna come back, we'll continue our AI discussion, but now we're gonna talk about AI agents. You're watching Textron Gang, Discover Textron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation.

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All right, folks, we're back. And the gang's gonna be talking about this whole Salesforce, uh, move to create a marketplace for agents. And it kind of continues from our last conversation 'cause well, this may be where the real action is.

John, you recovering this for us over there on text dry ai, what's your take? Well, uh, Salesforce, which, uh, has a conference this week in San Francisco, uh, has made a couple of announcements. Um, the, the highlight to me was the, uh, agent Force two dx, which is basically the next version of their digital labor platform.

So one of the things that Salesforce is going after, they, they refer to it as a $6 trillion digital labor market. So this new version of Agent Force basically would autonomously perform administrative tasks across enterprise systems with minimal human supervision. The reason why this is interesting to me is that this, this system is designed to embed AI agents that monitor data changes, anticipate needs across business processes.

And then it acts previously, they, they were triggered, agent force agents were triggered from a chat interfaces and required specific directions from humans to take action. So this, this was interesting. Salesforce made the announcement, uh, the same week that Microsoft introduced a new sales agent aimed specifically at competing with Salesforce.

And, and AWS announced a new group focused on ag agentic ai. Um, Salesforce also announced this open marketplace for AI agents for enterprises called Age Agent Exchange, which lets developers and partners build and monetize AI components. They announced more than 200 initial partners including Google Cloud, Workday box, DocuSign.

So if all part of this kind of momentum or movement into autonomously performing tasks through these agents. Um, so we're seeing, we're seeing momentum. There are more announcements that are about to come.

Cisco's make made one on Thursday. There are some others that are under embargo that I can't really disclose. But in a sense, this kind of builds off what we were talking about in the previous segments.

Uh, it will take a while as guy and I will acknowledge, and, and I think Mike, you're right, this is gonna take several years. But again, Salesforce is, is kind of pushing this idea and they've got some partners lined up and there's some actual real applications that were discussed as part of the announcement. You know, good.

Well, let me tell you what I really liked about the agents in the marketplace. 'cause I can envision a world that looks like this. I'm gonna go to this marketplace.

I'm gonna describe a task that I would like to have done, and these agents and the people who build them are gonna bid to fulfill my task. And so instead of me sitting around going, let me license this agent on a annual contract basis, I may do this on a usage based model, and I'm only gonna pay for the agent for as long as I needed to complete that particular task. So is this the AI version of driving your pickup truck by Home Depot and picking up illegal immigrants to do work for you?

That is exactly what it is. Wow. I thought the last, uh, block was, I thought a block was tough.

End it tough. You're really bringing the heat again out. Yeah.

No, I'm not, but, but you know what? I, I do think a workplace or, or, or a marketplace, look, it worked for the cloud, it worked for the phone, for the cell phone. Why wouldn't it work here?

Right? It it makes sense. It's, it's a tried and true model.

That being said, you know, I, I mentioned it yesterday on yesterday's gang. I, I, I did a customer or user experience feedback with an AI product that I'm playing with called Hoop, HOOP ai. And, um, and I was talking to one of the co-founders.

These are the people from cello and, um, well, they're not, they were, they helped start cello. They're not at cello anymore. Um, and I asked them about, you know, it's great to make these tasks for me, but I'd like to have an agent that does, does these things.

Are you gonna have an agent? And they said, you know, why would they make an agent? 'cause their belief is we're all gonna have so many agents that the last thing we want is another agent.

So maybe what they wanna have is, it's not quite an API, but maybe a way to plug into your existing agents to go do things. And I think that is something that the agent marketplace kind of model we, we've gotta think about is how many agents, are they single use agents? Are they disposable?

Do I get a Mr. Smith, like in the matrix, who does everything right? Um, what is the nature of these agents?

Are they ephemeral? Are they, are they permanent? Are they my digital butler?

Right. That You might have like a contract agent, right. To do specific job as, which is kind of like the disposable i, uh, concept.

Right? Exactly. I'm gonna have a mini mic agent that will manage all those other agents.

I, You know, well, you're gonna need that an an orchestrator agent perhaps, right? Or do you have one super agent that has many different facets? I I, you know, where does the, I mean, this could go all over the place.

I mean, and, and I'm sure it will over the course of time, but at least initially to me, it seems unwieldy. And, and in talking to these folks at Hoop, I'm, you know, I'm trying to put myself in their shoes as a developer of, of this AI platform, AI empowered tool they're building and are they making the right choice? Not building an agent, You know?

Yeah. I, Alan I think the questions are even answered. I mean, uh, you know, the great AI bungee jump that we've been experiencing, you know, uh, was built around generative ai, but turns out that was phase one.

I thought multimodal was gonna be phase two, but multimodal is just, it's just now like, it's a, it's a marketing word now. It's, it's real. But, you know, phase two of the great AI bungee jump, um, is agentic ai.

And what I mean by that is people are, well, it's obvious what I mean, they're just jumping into it. So is it a mistake not to have, uh, your own marketplace or plug into other marketplace? I mean, there's tons of marketplaces now Salesforce, uh, but they debated Agent Force last year, right?

It was, it's relatively new. So they're developing it rapidly. But, uh, uh, you know, uh, uh, Boomi, which is not a super well-known company, but one that is really right in the heart of where something like Ag agent AI agents in general, um, can be really helpful.

We're talking about enterprise workflow roughly. Um, they have, they have theirs, uh, uh, Cisco, uh, as John mentioned, um, SAP with their recent announcements, uh, Google Cloud, a WSI mean, there's ton, even the, the big cis integrators like Capgemini, I think is debuting their agentic AI marketplace. I mean, we didn't say AG agentic AI until like a year ago or something like that.

And then now we've got these full blown marketplaces appearing. Um, it's, uh, it's, it's gonna be adopted and used. Everybody's gonna get on the train just like they did with generative ai.

Well, 23%. Anyway. There's been a fear factor with AI for a while, right?

Like, yes. Like, I Mean, Fomo, the last few years, total fomo, every conference I went to, the message was really clear from whether it was a, a Michael Dell or, um, a Jess Wong and his cool leather jacket. If you're not already in the AI game, you're too late and you're gonna be behind.

So I think that fear factor is there, that fomo, um, guys, you're calling it is there for organizations to say, we've gotta dip our toes in on what Salesforce is doing with Agent exchange and their go to market. They launched this with over 200 partners. We're talking Google Cloud, Workday, DocuSign box.

So we're seeing that momentum really carry forward here on day one with these big names saying, this is what you need to be doing. Company A, company B, company Z, You know, the one of you talk, when you talk about foam of Salesforce, they were Exhibit A, right? They were considered the, the la the laggards.

So in a sense, they've really been ratcheting it up. So anyway, in a sense, they were considered the ones on the outside looking in. Now they're, they're kind of trying to, they're a little bit overcompensating, I'll put it that way.

They always do this. It's a very heavy duty marketing company, you know, first and foremost. Yeah, exactly.

Sorry, Elisa's point. This is the marketing battle of the decade. It's whoever controls the front end experience through that agent owns the hearts and minds.

And 90% of what's on the back end is gonna be, you know, for lack of a better phrase, a headless agent that other agents are calling and no one's ever gonna see, or no. So ultimately, who owns that desktop is where, or the smartphone or whatever that first agent in line is, owns the game. I bet.

Yep. com under research reports on maximizing ROI with agentic ai, why Agent forces the fast path to enterprise value. So clearly Salesforce seems to be staking out a leadership position here.

We, we, we discuss the SAP announcements around it. It'll be interesting. Look, here's, you know, don't count out Microsoft.

Oh, Azure's got, Azure's got an agent AI tool service. No, no. But in terms of an agent, uh, uh, uh, marketplace.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Or open AI or any for those Guys. Oh, any of them?

Yeah. Mm-hmm. We'll see, I, you know, place your bets.

Maybe that's what we should do, Mike. We should become like a, a bookkeeper for, that's on the am We've Talked about that before. Oh, we, okay.

Look, I'm just trying to be creative and innovative here to pay, pay some of these tariffs. All we, all we gotta do is, you know, hook up with somebody in England where they have these services anyway, and we, for an agent on the front end of it, and we're good to go. There You go.

Lad Brooks. Yeah, There you go. I thought you meant kinda like Sunday night football or whatever.

I mean Yeah. Where we, where, you know, all the panelists, uh, placed their bed, and then you look later and see who was right and who was wrong. We, we could, could, we could work on that if you want.

We could do that. We could work on that. Yeah.

But then we let other people bet on which they think is right. Oh, yeah. There you go.

Mm-hmm. God, you're not allowed to get off to bet on you. Right?

No family and friends. Anyway, let's take a break. We're gonna come back here.

We've got C Block. And believe it or not, I don't think we're gonna talk about AI in C Block. I hope not.

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Home of security bloggers network. All right, folks, we're back with the next block. And we're talking about a case involving insider threat in cybersecurity terms.

That means somebody who was on the inside who hacked something to gain some advantage. And a lot of the time we're so focused on preventing attacks from the outside that we forget that the inside's an issue. In this case, um, in New York, a couple of folks have been charged with the hacking into the StubHub network to grab some tickets from Taylor Swift concerts and then reselling them at a much higher markup, which of course is a really annoying thing to all those Swifty fans out there, which includes our own Lisa Martin.

But what's your take on all of this? I think that this is the tip of an iceberg, but I could be wrong. No, you're right, Mike.

It is the tip of the iceberg. 7 billion. But what we saw is, is these two people, to your point, Mike, were insiders.

They worked for an outsourcing company, um, of StubHub called Sutherland Global Services out of Jamaica. What they did was they got access to an unauthorized part of StubHub where they store electronic information about ticket purchases, and they only got about 350 different, um, purchases, but it accounted for about a thousand tickets. And what they did was they redirected, normally when you buy a ticket up through a, a ticketing service like this, you get the email, you get a unique URL with the email to download your tickets, put 'em in your wallet.

Well, they went in there and manipulated the email addresses, punted, um, what accumulated to $635,000 worth of Taylor Swift tickets to accomplices, who then resold them. And we're seeing issues like this, not just from StubHub, who said, yep, we've been, we've been hacked. They got in, we're working on this Live nation at Ticketmaster, what they're, but these people are prying on me.

I you can't even call it a cybercrime ring with two people, two people did this in between June, 2022 and July of 2023. So about a year they were able to make $635,000. They did it with Adele, ed Sheeran US Open.

But because the Taylor Swift tour is the highest grossing tour of all time, I think it's getting a lot of headlines. We're seeing it in the US and Canada and the uk, but it's showing a bigger problem that these ticket resellers are going to have. And that is the, the vulnerabilities that they have in their systems that they need to identify, and the fact that they've got folks who are vulnerable, like super fans who are vulnerable to scammers.

So this is a growing problem that the live nations, the StubHubs, the Ticketmasters and the like, have got to fix. So look, as Bill Clinton would say, this is simple arithmetic, simple arithmetic. When you've got tickets that are going for thousands, thousands of dollars, the the temptation to make a buck like that, to make big bucks, $600,000 plus here to make big bucks is too great.

And, and it's gonna corrupt people. You know, I, I was having a conversation with some friends of mine the other day. You know, there's this new Led Zeppelin movie out the making of Led Zeppelin or whatever is, it's in imax.

I haven't gone to see it yet, unfortunately, but it's on my list to go see. And, um, I thought back, I was talking with my friends that I grew up with. We went to see Led Zeppelin, 1977 or 78, 77, I think it was in Madison Square Garden.

One of my friends still has the ticket stub because it wasn't electronic. We didn't have it in our phone. We didn't have votes, but we had tickets and he still had the ticket stub.

You know how much that ticket cost us? $35. You know how you got it?

You had to send in an envelope with a check made out to whatever it was, led Zeppelin tickets or whatever for the amount. You are only allowed to get three or four tickets, had to send in a real check with a postage page, self-addressed, stamped envelope. Right?

And it was, and if they picked your envelope, they mailed you back your tickets in that self-addressed stamped envelope. It was a sucky system, but I got tickets to ledge up with for 35 bucks. And, and you didn't have, How much do you think those would've cost now?

Right? If they were, you know, if they were selling Priceless, priceless. Hey, this, this is making me nostalgic for that sketchy guy I used to meet in a bar and buy World Series tickets off of, you know, yeah, I did that, But maybe that's a safer Transaction.

But isn't, aren't these guys from Jamaica, his, his Yes. Descendants in some way, right? Yes.

Look, there is Mr Is from Jamaica, where there's a market where there's a will, there's a way, right? I Mean, we were, when we were meeting in New York, Alan, you went to a Knicks game, right? Yes.

And we were talking about the ticket prices. You know what, that's why I don't go to as many sporting events as I used to. I used to go to dozens, or I used to go to 40 baseball games a year.

And for the Warriors, I used to go four or five times a year. I can, I can go once maybe a year because it's cost Prohibited. Well, but that's the problem with pro sports in general, is yes, they've almost priced it out of the working man's, you know, working man would take his family.

Mike, when you were younger, they took you to Yankee Stadium, right? Gave you beer. You were eight years old, drinking a couple beers and hot dogs.

Yeah. That's why it's a safe word. The day camp people took us.

Yeah. I mean, I, I used to go with the day camp people too. You're right.

But it was cheap. I mean, now, you know, a dad wants to take his, his two kids and wife to a ball game. I don't care whether it's a a football game.

It's crazy. Basketball, hockey, even baseball, which used to be the cheapest. You are dropping a couple of hundred dollars easily, if not a thousand, easily At least.

Yes. This is, this is turned into the, this turned into the Crank podcast. 'cause Yeah, it is very much.

You know what we're do, we're not Harry, get on Go Play. I'm talking own about the Yeah, we're not talking about the breach. We're talking about back in the day.

I only Had to to spend, but No, but, but let me go back in the day to Mike's guy where he bought those shady, the shady guy at the World Series tickets. Didn't it always used to bother you? Where the hell did these guys get their tickets?

Mm-hmm. How did they get those tickets? What, who did they know?

How did they get 'em? Well, in some ways, this is the path to the tickets a little clearer here, right? Mm-hmm.

It's an electronic digital path that we, we could forensically see how the hell it worked and, and what happened. This to me Makes we could, but will we, Alan, because that's what's really interesting to me here. Well, we know how this one went down, Right?

Well, we know that a Stub Hub partner accessed a protected Stub Hub database. We don't know how they access. Oh, I I'm sure they do.

And they haven't said it. I'm sure they do. They Probably not.

You making people, I mean, StubHub and whoever they hired, CrowdStrike or whoever did their forensics, they, they not, you know, look, the people stealing Taylor Swift tickets aren't sophisticated enough to not leave hand fingerprints, right? Digital fingerprints in what they're doing. They, they know how they got in here.

That took nearly two years to come to light. Well Be, because guide, the average hack doesn't get discovered for anywhere from nine to 13 months. That's across the board.

Not just Swifty Or everyone up, but Mike brings up a great insurance. Well, yeah, you know, you, you, you bring that up. I just interviewed the CEO of cow, or one of the co-founders of Cowbell, which is one of the leading cyber insurance companies in the world.

They're moving in not just to cyber insurance, but to cyber products now, to make sure that they pay less claims, right? That you're actually using, because cyber insurance has become the big stick. You want cyber insurance for these kinds of things.

They're gonna insist the same way. Homeowner insurance, make sure you have a good roof and your windows don't leak, and, and you have your safety equipment. Same thing with cyber insurance.

I'm not giving you cyber insurance if you don't have a good policy and a resilience plan and blah, blah, blah, all in place. And now here I'll sell you the resilience plan and that, that's become big business. But in the Taylor Swift case, let's not forget the poor Schnuck who paid the money for the, for that ticket.

And you know, in in law there's this concept guy, you know, there's this law of specific performance, right? No amount of money's gonna compensate me. I, my daughter's a Swifty and I promised her I'm taking her and those tickets are gone.

I can't get another ticket. And what's The, what these folks are exploiting, sorry, Alan is the emotional element of what ended up being this tour and parents doing everything they could. I mean, there were videos from like, when the tickets first went on sale of Swifties just sobbing because they couldn't get access to tickets.

There were issues with Live Nation and Ticketmaster. And so people are preying on the emotional element of some of these, um, artists who are really creating experiences. I went to the concert, it was an actual amazing experience.

But that's what's happening is when you get the emotion involved and the fact that it's so easy for this two people to gain access to the Stu Hub system, it's a huge problem. But Mike brought up this in the very beginning of the block, and that is, this is, this is the tip of the iceberg. I think Live Nation said last year that they were investigating a data breach that dis that, uh, displayed access to over 500 million Ticketmaster customers data.

So this is something that these organizations have got to get under control ASAP, because you know what, millions of transactions occur on these sites every day for expensive items. Look, I I think those, do They have an incentive to, to get them under control? No, they don't.

And that's the problem. They're monopolies. They do.

They they do, they do have an incentive. 'cause here's how it will play out. So let's say I am the dad with the kids who are Yankee fans, but I can't take 'em to go to a Yankee game.

You know what those kids are gonna wind up doing? They're gonna go watch soccer or something else, or they're gonna go, go a concert, or they're gonna have a different experience. Like they will sell those tickets too.

Or StubHub will sell those tickets too. Let me tell the, the whole, you are out of order, your Honor. The whole system is rotten.

This whole thing that we have these, you know, the Ticketmaster, stub Hub, SeatGeek and all, all of the other ones, the whole system is rotten. It's people making money on the backs of the artists and the athletes, right? And, and I, look, you could argue that athletes shouldn't make the money they make or that artists shouldn't make the money they make, but I'd rather my, if I'm gonna go see them play or whatever, I'd rather my money go to them than go to these leaches and vultures who, who bring it on, including StubHub themselves, the fees they charge over and above what someone's selling their te I'm a season ticket holder to the Dolphins.

I'm not a Dolphins fan. I gave up selling my tickets because, you know, if I sell my, so first of all, they're crazy exp I gave up the tickets, period. I'm a Gearless fan.

But the, the tickets themselves are crazy expensive. You could hardly sell them for what you cost. And then when you put them in for basically what they cost, by the time StubHub puts their fees on, it's, it's, it's one and a half times the the cost.

Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.

The whole, the system's run It, it is, it, it's that. And we thought we addressed that with the Biden, you know, the, the push to, to eliminate those fees. But, um, They have it, what they do now is they, they do include the fees.

It used to be you'd search for tickets, you'd say, oh, these are only $250 each. That sounds good. And then you'd go in and those two, $250 tickets are $700.

Well, where's the math? Well, there's fees and taxes and delivery and blah, blah, blah. So they did.

Now they show you the fees included in the price, but it's still a bad system. And so when you have a, an unjust law, right? Natural law theory here, another law school thing for you guy, natural law theory, if you've got an unjust law or an unjust system, people are gonna hack it.

People are gonna do this. So, so my, my crank contribution to this is way back in the day, we had political actors and a Congress willing to put consumer protections in place. And that's what they did with the credit card companies such that the credit card companies are the ones liable for this kind of fraud.

Now, I don't know what, how you can compensate someone for a missed once, you know, once in a lifetime event, but there is no such protection anymore and it can't be passed through any recent Congress, you know, I'm aware of. So that is something that used to be better. And I don't know if we're ever gonna get back to this kind of protection of the, the poor consumer.

Yes. Alan? No, no.

Are you done your Head act to crank number two? No. No, guy, thank you for telling us that.

I'd like an email from you with the five things you did last week. No problem. Oh, alright.

Hey, let's leave it. One of Them was, was to join Techstrong Gang, or should I say Textron Cranks. Textron Cranks.

Hey, Hey, hey, Alan. A little spoiler alert. I I, I went to see the Led Zeppelin documentary.

They go on to be huge rock stars at the end. Oh, Wow. I had a, well, look, Get away the ending.

Raise Your hand if you saw them live. Oh, I'm probably alert the only one here who, who actually A buddy, a buddy of mine Saw their last show in North America, which was in Oakland. Really?

Oh, that's cool. Yes. So Yeah, no, that was, that was a concert.

Yes. All right. On that note, whole lot of love, stairway to heaven, all that love led Zep.

But we're, we're gonna call an end to the Textron gang today. Have a great weekend, everyone. We have a full Textron TV as usual schedule behind us here, so stay tuned on that.

If you're watching this not on our text Drunk TV broadcast, go check out Textron tv or our Textron TV YouTube channel. And, uh, you could watch this and past episodes of The Gang and about 8,000 other videos on there. So check that out.

Thanks a lot, gang members. Have a great weekend, everyone. For now, this is Alan Shimmel for Textron.

We're out.