Techstrong Gang – May 19, 2025

Hey everyone, it's Tim Cook in Hot Water with El Duchey. You're watching Textron Gang. Hey everyone, happy Monday.

I hope you had a great weekend. It was a great weekend. I was up in Boston to actually, my son, my oldest son graduated law school and it was quite a, uh, well, it was a proud moment for me, so all good there.

Um, but we're back here on the gang and we've got some great gang members. Let me get right to them. First of all, joining us from some airport somewhere in the world.

He is a future analyst, visible impact principle, analyst, tech, strong, loyal Techron gang member moving up the ranks here, the one and only Guy Courier. Hey guy. How are you?

Hi. Good to be here. Yep, I'm good.

I'm in the Orlando airport, the wonderful Orlando airport on the way back. 'cause I spent the weekend, uh, with my uncle who lives in here. And, and, and also I do wanna say my daughter is starting college, uh, next year, but, uh, her plans go to Ross School.

Congratulations to You. Thank you. You know, I mean, he did the hard work.

I just wrote the checks, but, um, nevertheless, very proud. It's a proud moment. All right, moving over from guy, one of our newest members of the gang, but she's been on three or four already.

She's a regular, excuse me, cybersecurity expert extraordinaire, Terry Robinson. Hey, Terry. Good to see you.

It's so good to see you. And I wanna extend my congratulations, uh, too for, uh, son's graduation. Uh, my daughter graduates, uh, today, Monday afternoon, uh, from law school as well.

So, um, Really good for you. Nick stopped the bar, I guess, right? Yeah, yeah.

I think well in bar. So he's taking the mass bar up in Boston and it's the end of July. Yeah, they're all around The same.

That's when she's taking the New York bar. So, Yeah. Very cool.

Very cool indeed. Alright, moving over to Silicon Valley where he looks, he looks downright Roy in the cheeks today. Even he, I don't know, maybe, I don't know if it's makeup or someone's been pinching him, but he's our Silicon Valley editor, John Swartz.

Hey, John. How are you, man? I'm good.

I'm back at the friendly confines of Belmont. Congratulations to all our college graduates and people going into college. Um, uh, it's great to be here.

Absolutely. It's great to have you on. And then finally, he might be graduating from going to minor league games to the big league.

Well, Mike, you, you had the subway series this weekend, but, um, we're here not to talk baseball, but Juan Soto got booed really bad in it, and I gotta tell you the truth, I felt good. Um, our Chief Content Officer, Mike Ard. All right.

We got, we got two outta college, one in and one to go. So I'll be working for a while. Yeah, That's what that means.

Um, anyway, let, let's move into it. I, I kicked it off. It seems our friends at Apple have, uh, have crossed the MAGA line.

You know, um, they, well, they're not gonna, you know, they're not gonna build more iPhones in China, but they wanna build them in India instead. And, and, you know, uh, while he was in the UAE giving them 500,000 GPUs from Nvidia to build the biggest a AI center there, he, he took the time out to chastise Apple and Tim Cook about building iPhones in India. Mike, what do you think?

Well, it seems like, um, to your point, we talked about the whole, uh, meddling in the GPU business last week, and now we're extending that out to smartphones. And the apparently told, uh, the CEO of Apple that, um, manufacturing in India was undermining the trade position for the United States government. So all these things now are somehow other bargaining chips.

But guy, this is unprecedented in my mind, but what's your take? Well, I think what's unprecedented is the degree to which just lip flapping is being taken seriously because of the position of the person flapping lips. I mean, I, I I, you know, last week, um, the Trump was out in, uh, in, in the Middle East being, you've heard the phrase that being treated like royalty, but in this case take it literally, literally being treated as if he were a prince, um, or a king or what have you.

Um, and, uh, I, I completely believe that he had the, the conversation with Tim Koch. I do not necessarily believe liter. I don't definitely don't believe literally what he said about that conversation.

Um, other than the detail of saying, Hey, you know, you, uh, you have to manufacture everything here. Um, I think he probably did say that. Um, and, uh, apple, I mean, pity the poor tech billionaire, CEO, right?

Um, who has founded, uh, in Tim Cook's case, a lot of that billionaire ship and the, the deserved success of Apple on manufacturing and assembly of, uh, iPhones, but also a lot of other devices in China, and is trying to find some way to find stability in supply chain, um, in the midst of complete instability in, uh, trade policy and, uh, to actually, tariffs is the usual word, but all kinds of uncertainty over how much, uh, costs of manufacturing, assembly overseas are gonna be, right? So they move to a different wait, what would anybody do in that position, billionaire or net? They're gonna move to another source.

And they've increased the investment in India from, I mean, John, you wrote this story. I think they're moving towards something like 25% of iPhones being manufactured in India. It's probably 15.

Yeah. 20, yeah. 25%.

Yeah. Is that 15% a few years ago? Um, but let's call this for what it is, which is, uh, another thing for, uh, a politician to say and take credit for that doesn't necessarily have any actual foundation behind it.

Our president happens to do that about 99% of the time, instead of 50% of the time, or 20% of the time, you know, Senate, you feel I would not take this to the bank in any way, except for one thing. We still don't really know. We dunno what Tim Cook said.

We don't know what Apple's gonna do. All we have are the words of somebody who says all kinds of things all the time. And, and I, John, I really appreciated the way your story was liberal with the quotes of our president.

Um, instead of trying to take them to face value, just present them to everybody. Yeah, no, it's like a mob boss, you know, trying to strong arm somebody and shake 'em down. I mean, it's just the, this is to think of, I think of the absurdity, and I know Alan's gonna weigh in on this.

We've got maybe arguably the greatest CEO in terms of operations and running a company who's trying to do the best thing for his shareholders and, and his employee and customers. S is what, I'm Sorry. Right.

And customers Too. He's trying to diversify the, and customers, especially customers. He's trying to diversify the product lines so he doesn't jack up the price of the product.

Um, he's keeping his options open. And in fact, from what I understand, within Apple, they have, um, plans in place to either move harder to India or have to, or fall back into China. What, what is must, must be so galling to cook is this idea that Trump is gonna probably change his mind yet again.

I mean, he dropped the tariffs against China. He doesn't change his mind. John, John, he doesn't change his mind.

These people take a stick and hit him on the head and say stupid back down. And he pulls up like a cheap suit. I'm On.

Here's my, here's my, Doesn't change his mind, But here for, for, for Apple. The fear, the fear is they have this exemption in place, right? He's gonna lift that probably, I mean, he's gonna change his mind yet again, it's a guy who, who, who doesn't understand basic math telling, telling somebody who's a genius at operations.

I'm just gonna play games with you, despite your commitment to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the US over the, over four years in manufacturing, what have you. It, I mean, the whole thing is so galling and it must be chilling to any other tech company or, or any company that has to deal with this, this BS and it Can't going well, I, it a shakedown. I think your essential point is it's a shakedown.

And the, and, and the, the, the important thing is that the shakedowns never stop. They never stop. So if you give in, well, here's The, it doesn't mean they'll stop the important, it's not just a shakedown.

It's not just, it's a shakedown look, should Tim turn around and buy him a nice plane and then everything will be okay? Right? Is that what it takes?

Because, and you know what, for with all due respect, Camilla Harris brought this up in the debate with him. The one debate, 'cause he was afraid to do more 'cause she ran around him. That foreign leaders know his game, they know flatter him or flat out bribe him, and he lays down like a puppy dog to scratch my belly.

Right? That's what you're dealing with here. But let me, let me sit down, let me unpack this for you.

Besides buying him a plane or something that'll mollify this guy and let you do anything you want. Let, let's look at what it is. This, this.

SOB is in the Middle East cavorting with people who have financially supported terrorists, who have blown up stuff and killed people in the us let alone in Israel and everywhere else, right? It's a known fact that the Qatari support Hamas, it's a known fact where Bin Laden's financial support came from, right? But is okay.

And he's going to use Apple as a whipping boy, a fine corporation that's already pledged $500 billion. He's going to use them as a whipping boy while he allows UAE to, to, as I mentioned, get 500,000 Nvidia GPUs to build an AI campus. They're perhaps the biggest in the world while him and his sons are making $400 million deals to buy golf, to build golf courses and build buildings over there, right?

Didn't think it was important enough to go up to Turkey and deal with anything around this Ukraine, Russian war. 'cause that's really just lip service until Vlad pulls his string and tells him, get over here. Right?

This whole thing is ridiculous. But let me give you another thing. Apple's duty is not to the United States of America, though they're a US company or a US based company.

They have customers and interest around the world. Tim Cook has one boss, and it ain't Donald Trump. It's the board of directors of Apple and their shareholders.

And he has a fiduciary duty to do what's best for Apple and their shareholders, not even their customers, their shareholders. And that may or may not be in sync with what, what's best for us policy. But this is what happens when you have global corporations.

There's a, and it's high time. We remember corporations have a duty to their shareholders. If Tim Cook starts doing what's right for the US at the, at the cost of his shareholders, he's going to get fired and sued and, and right for himself.

Well, Imagine, imagine if, if, imagine if Trump had his way. So, uh, say Apple and, and, and, and, and just in sheer panic was forced into doing this. It's, it's, it's absurd.

It would take years, first of all, to ramp up production. It's, it would cost 3,500. It's for an, it's like, it's, but here's the visual.

You got this 78-year-old felt, 280 pound person with Jensen Wong, Elon Musk, and all these other syco fonts glued onto his hip or his backside or whatever, and he's telling him, yeah, give him 500,000 GPUs. Give them some starlink. I want my name on that building.

Give me this plane. Dude. The, did you ever watch the Star Trek episode where they land on the planet, that somehow there was a book like Al Capone Chicago was left there, and 500 years later, the whole civilization is built around the gangs of, of Chicago.

This is what we live in. This is what we live in. It's, it's, it's ludicrous.

It's psychotic. Stop, stop the nonsense. Hey, I Have an idea.

Maybe, maybe Apple, maybe app. Maybe Apple should build a special Trump iPhone like they did for you too. Maybe they, they, they appeal to his ego and narcissism and they build a, a trump A key on this.

No. I'll give you another example. Do you remember Godfather part two, Michael Corleone and Hyman Roth go to visit the, the president of Cuba, uh, Duarte, right?

I think, no, that, that was a different Banana Republic, whoever was the president before Fidel took Batista and Batista, they're sitting around these table with all these captains of industry, much like Trump is. And he passes around a solid gold telephone as a gift to Batista from, from ITT. And everyone look around and everyone looks at the phone and they pass it around.

And it's very, it's the, this is the same. It, it's like out of a frigging movie, dude. Come on.

This is, we're living, we're living in a, in a nightmare. We live in a nightmare of what the US should and could be. That's the bottom line.

You Know, you know what was really also telling Alan is when you mentioned the sink offense, we had the, the president of Alphabet of his I-B-M-C-E-O, Sam Altman was their Qualcomm. CEOI mean, it Was a little disturb. Well, you don't think it's the same thing when Putin comes somewhere and he brings gas prom and that prom and the other prom, and they all go to a prom.

It's the same, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Um, I just, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not really sure though.

You're characterizing the nightmare correcting. I think there's a lot nightmarish about this. But in it, in the context of this show, this podcast, the nightmare is that there are businesses and individuals around the world who rely on Apple and the iPhone in particular to conduct business or to live their lives.

And they have no idea. It's not that they think the price is gonna go up or down or whatever. They, they, that whole platform for them has become less reliable in terms of cost use, what have you.

And that may be one piece of it. When you think about the fact that these kind of, this flapping of the whips can happen anywhere with any company or country randomly and continue to create that uncertainty. We don't even have to talk about business uncertainty.

We can just talk about the uncertainty of individuals around the world being able to do the things that they wanna do. That I think with technology in the, in the context of this show, so the rest of the nightmare, you're talking about having a kleptocratic or godfather as a president or whatever it is. I agree with you, that's a nightmare.

That's a political nightmare. It's a global economic and global political nightmare. But I, I always try to bring it back to the fact that this is text draw.

And I would like people to understand like, what do I do now? Great. The flat slips, what do I do?

And I think it's just recognize that the problem you're facing, you, well, I buy, you know, what to begin with. Recognize what the problem is within this context of technology planning is gonna be more. Well, I just, I was just gonna say, I don't, you know, I don't think this is good for anybody that trumped himself, and that's only a temporary flash, I guess.

Um, he roiling the markets worldwide. That's what he is gonna do. That uncertainty isn't good for the economy.

It's not good for the tech companies. It's not good for the country. And it's certainly not good for who you're talking about guy, the people who have to use this stuff.

So, um, I just wonder at point, this breaks, what, when does this break? When does it break? When is it enough?

Or when does something happen? There's like a, a critical mass and, and, and it just, it falls apart. I don't, I mean, am I being hopeful to think that that might happen at, at some point?

Um, and, and there's a, a shakeup in our government or somebody. I don't, I don't even know how you leash him or pull him in from this kind of stuff, but he's, there's just gonna be such long term, uh, impact on, on everything. I don't mean to sound.

So my next question is, is, is there gonna be a shakedown of Samsung to follow this? Because that seems to be the next thing. I mean, Have own, well, he doesn't consider Samsung an American company, right?

The concept of an American company versus those guys. We made t we made tm SC commit to building plans here in The US suspect. Well, because we hold the gun to their head that we won't help them when the, the, the red China people invade, right?

I gotta bring this back to the same gun. I gotta bring it back to the flapping of the lips idea. The purpose of the statements is publicity trump's own brand image, power.

It's not an actual move of any kind, other than that. So, no, it's not Samsung, because, you know, I I don't think it's Samsung either, because to, to Samsung is not this burnish brand, this amazing brand like Apple. So name a bunch of amazing brands and yes, but Samsung.

Samsung, However greatest Samsung is not Samsung is not an American company. But there's one other aspect that we haven't touched on. If Donald Trump was in the White House press room or here domestically, and this is a domestic thing, it would still get a lot of play.

But, you know, he's here doing his thing. But no, he was actually at a press conference with the, the, the Amir of UAE and he brought this whole thing up. The Amir's looking at him like, what, what did, have you seen the video of this?

The visuals? They're looking at him like, where, because he also at the same press conference brought up, what a great job he's done with the price of groceries. And he said to the Amira, I don't know if you know what groceries is, it's an old word or something like that.

This this buffoon right? Is out here in the world not realizing the jokes on him. They're not laughing with him.

They're laughing at him, but they know all they gotta do is throw a couple dollars his way. And like I said, he rolls over and, you know, one thing that the, the oil rich Arab states are really good at, it's why they're still in power. These Amirs and sheiks and all of them, they've always bought their way in.

They've always bought their way in. Have we forgotten what happened to the reporter? AAN Ko?

Kgi kgi, right? Yeah. You don't hear about that anymore.

He's bought his way in. They've done this. This is what the Amirs and the Sheik and the, the, the Saudis do when they find someone who's viable, they buy 'em.

And that's what, and and be proud America, you've been, your president's been bought. Let's take a break. We'll come back, we'll talk about csa.

Hey folks, we're backing. Well, the fun never ends when it comes to anything related to Washington. And there's been another turn in the CSA drama.

It's a bit of a soap opera these days, but apparently there was a contract that got canceled that was being disputed anyway, but now we're just basically saying, well, it's all mute. Because anybody who was involved in actually needing that service from a company called Lidos, well, they're not working there anymore. So, Terry, what is going on in CSA from your perspective?

And is this gonna be just, you know, continuing drama? Sure. Uh, well, you know, more shenanigans basically from this administration when it comes to, to csa.

I mean, I, I think really all of this stems back right to, um, uh, when Chris Krebs said that the 2020 election, uh, was secure and, um, that sort of undercut, you know, Trump's narrative that, uh, he had, uh, really won the election and whatever, um, and Joe Biden had lost. So I think, you know, going back to that, we know that he's going after Krebs already for, um, you what, whatever it is. Um, I, I don't think there's any case there, but, um, he's publicly trying to skewer him.

So I think this is a bit more of the same. 4 billion contract was under dispute, um, already in the courts. But that's because Knight Wing, uh, who was competitive for this bid, um, uh, and, and, and Lados, um, were sort of duking it in.

But, um, the Department of Homeland Security has made it clear, or they've said that this has nothing to do with that. It's, uh, they're pulling the contract simply because the nature of CSA has changed, the personnel, the mission and, and whatever. Um, and it's a, it's a shame.

I mean, this, this contract is, uh, for agile cyber security technology, uh, technical solutions, right? So that supports, uh, analytics, testing, integration of security tools. Um, at, at this point, it's, it's gone away.

Uh, honestly, it feels to me, um, again, like it's, it's just this, uh, administration's grudge against CS a and also, um, kind of fits into what Chris Murphy, uh, I know you guys saw that how he secured Christie, uh, no last week. Um, and said that basically DHS has turned into sort of the, the border security. I mean, that's where all their money is going.

That's where all their effort is going. I think they don't care about taking, uh, uh, money away from cybersecurity efforts at a time when we probably under heightened threat. So look, you put a puppy killer in charge of these things, right?

And this is what you're dealing with, again, the, the, the ludicrous nature of our lives these days in the us right? You have a woman who's vastly, vastly underqualified here. Other than that, she sucks up to Donald Trump and she shot a puppy when she didn't like it.

You put her in charge of the DHS and, and you make their primary mission to be border control, as you mentioned, Terry. But it's not just the DH S'S primary mission. We're taking away troops in Europe and all over the world because the primary mission of our armed forces are also to be border control.

We, we have this is, this is like outta the, you know, I feel like an iron curtain has descended upon the continent, right? That that's what you, this is where we are now. Csa, which has probably done more to help cybersecurity than any government agency or initiative that I've seen in my 30 years of doing this, has been bludgeoned bludgeoned.

I mean, she, she, but here's the thing. You gotta give these people credit. They're so transparent, they don't even hide it.

She got up at RSA and said she was doing this and, and proud of it and proud of it. People are sitting in the, the audience. I was there.

They're sitting there shocked that this woman has the audacity to come to RSA conference where the security world gathers to tell us that they're, they're, they're disarming csa. So what do you expect? What, what, you know, when someone has said this before, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

If it sounds like a fascist and acts like a fascist, they're fascist. That's what you're dealing with. So, I I, I surprised by this.

No, I do hope that private industry can fill the vacuum private things like R-S-A-C-R-S-A community and some other Linux foundations and, and some of these non-governmental entities because there is a vacuum to be filled here. 'cause I fear we are going to have some sort of critical infrastructure or some sort of catastrophic cyber warfare incidents because we, we are taking down, we're, we're laying down our arms, we are laying down our arms and saying, as long as you're not brown and coming over the southern border, we don't care what you do. The part of this that's crazy though, the, the, the part of this that's exceptionally crazy is that there's sort of this assumption coming from them that says, um, you know, those attacks from Russia or China that involve any kinda, uh, social engineering and propaganda are not attacks.

Right? Those are not within the purview of CS a to go defend. And that part is crazy because you're allowing foreign entities to pollute conversations and attack election systems with nobody there to defend it.

Yeah. But If you, You know, it's almost like open, Open now. We're wide open.

Everything's backward, Everything's backward. We, we look the other way, yet we accuse CSO of being Ministry of Truth, and we denigrate Chris k Cribs, who was great at his job while we we dismantle this organization. Sorry, sorry guy for interrupting.

No, no, no. I was, say, it struck me. Um, the, the, uh, which I think Al alluded to this really straightforward nature of this, they didn't say flight.

They didn't go quite there and say, we don't need this 2 billion do dollar contract because we, the agency that would use it is basically destroyed. And, uh, it's, and stood down. But they said the priorities have changed at cisa, which is Right.

That's actually right. They didn't even say, oh, we're gonna save a bunch of money. And one, one thing that was really interesting, uh, Terry, uh, you mentioned the, the, the Chris Murphy, uh, and the, just the general engagement that, um, that Christie Nome had, uh, at, um, uh, with Congress last week or two weeks ago, whenever it was, um, because he pointed out to her that they've spent all their money for the year, more or less already.

Yeah. They're, they're gonna be spending more than they have, and they're to do that. So They'll spend more and then, and then they'll talk about what a terrible deficit the previous administration left them in.

Yeah. But that's a whole other thing that's going on here. They're not proposing budgets for next year.

They're spending in, you know, way, like, what is it about a $500 million ad campaign that, uh, that, that they put up at, uh, at Homeland Security? I don't know how much of their budget that is. Probably not a whole lot, honestly.

And canceling a a multi-year contract might sound really great with all these billions of dollars and stuff. That's really not gonna make the whole, it's all theater. It's all theater.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna start talking like Alan now. It's all theater. The guy they put in, in charge of fema, which I believe also is Homeland Security.

He, he came out the other day and said, look, he's never done this before. He really doesn't have a hurricane or emergency response plans put in place. They've lost a lot of people.

Give him some time. He's working on it. It's hurricane season here in two weeks.

Well, yeah. And as What, what catastrophe, what could go wrong? Um, I'm sorry, go ahead, Terry.

I was gonna say, as a native of Louisiana, that actually makes me shutter. Um, but, but I think, you know, to your point though, Mike, too, I mean, if you, if you admit that these things are going on that Russia's doing this, or China's doing that, or you know, north Korean hackers or whatever, then you are admitting that they are our enemies and that they probably had something to do with, you know, election interference previously and all that. This administration can't admit to, to any of that.

So I think CISA is gonna, whatever is left to cease, is gonna always be in the crosshairs. And I think we're not gonna, uh, you know, really admit publicly to these problems until we have some big incident. And to your point, you know, Alan, yes.

It's like an iron curtain dropping down, but what can penetrate that iron curtain? It's cyber attacks. Yes.

Yeah. Crazy. All right, let's take a break.

Can we talk about something not related to this administration? My blood pressure is, is high. You are watching Textron Gang.

Let's come back and talk about Salesforce or something. Discover Textron 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 talking about an acquisition that Salesforce made where they bought a company that specializes in AI agents.

It kind of took me by surprise. 'cause I could have sworn that I had just spent the last two years listening to Salesforce about how great they are and AI agents, and then they turned around and bought somebody who, well, looks like they're pretty good in AI agents. But John, am I being cynical?

Uh, no, you're not being cynical. You're being brutally honest, Mike. Um, this seems to be a pattern, right?

We're, we're seeing the, all these AI related acquisitions to kind of fill gaps or add spackle to what companies have told us they can already do. So it kind of raises every, is a little bit of suspicion. Um, so Salesforce basically says they've, they've agreed to acquire convergence, um, ai, which is behind these advanced systems that perform complex human-like tasks in digital environments, such as AI agent design, autonomous task execution, adapted systems.

And in a sense, basically they're, they, the acquisition is meant to advance what agent force, the foundation of Salesforce's AI strategy is supposed to be doing, or has been doing, maybe struggling to do. It's interesting, I think Mike, a couple weeks ago you wrote a story. Um, Salesforce has been just clobbering us over their head with announcements, but they, they, uh, they made this, uh, they had this continuing EGI initiative that they've been pushing, and, um, they, uh, made us a couple of announcements including CRM Arena.

And, and I, it's, to me, it's interesting. I I think we're gonna see more of this. I mean, literally every other day we're seeing a minor acquisition of, by a large company that claimed to have a comprehensive AI agent strategy.

That's my takeaway. Um, so I too share your cynicism, right? It does feel like a rollup is already starting to happen in all these AI startups where the bigger companies are just buying them.

I guess maybe they figure they're less expensive now than later, or maybe the pricing is right. But, um, I don't know. Alan, do you think the incumbents have an advantage when it comes to agen AI because they have all the data, or, you know, is this gonna be, the startups are eventually gonna take over 'cause they're just faster and better innovative?

So, you know, last week, last Thursday I did one of my shimmy says my weekly shimmy says, uh, on LinkedIn, there might be a short of it on YouTube. I'm gonna get these all moved over to text on tv. I addressed this, right?

I addressed this issue, spoke about this one a little bit. Um, Mike, the startups never really take over. If you are lucky with every wave, one or two of the startups make their way into the old boys club, but it's still an old boys club, right?

And this is the way of it, right? These startups innovate the little fish, they innovate the medium fish. They, they buy that innovation and they make products out of it and product market fit.

And then the big fish eat the medium fish and they put those products into their platform. That's what this is, right? And as a Yankee fan, Mike, I'm surprised that you don't see why Salesforce would buy conversion.

You could never have enough pitching or left-handed hitters in Yankee Stadium. And you, if you Salesforce, Right? If you Salesforce, you never have enough ai uh, agentic AI expertise.

But Here's the thing and why Yeah, go Ahead guy. Go ahead. No, No, you go.

Don't come back. No. Why you need that stable.

Why do you need that stable? Because, you know, the number of baseball scenarios is infinite. And so you're just trying to cover as many of as you can with different, even, you know, uh, uh, two lefthanded slider pitchers can have different approaches that you might wanna use.

Oh, one, make it hard. So you can have an infinite bullpen you would like. Can I just wanna, I just wanna help us step back a little bit on this.

I spent, uh, uh, the last two weeks at two successive conferences that talked about AG agentic ai. And do you remember on this show, I've said before, there's no such thing as an AI application. I posted for rants about this before.

There's applications and they use ai. So AG agentic AI is an agent that uses AI and one or more AI services, but it's an agent, no CIO or CTO, everyone around like five years ago saying, Hey, you know what we need? We need more agents.

The question is, the question was for what? For what? I need an ops agent.

I need, you know, maybe a, a a workflow agent. Like there are lots of agents all up and down the stack, so to say agentic ai, it's just a really non-descriptive category. Why did Salesforce buy an a, a, a agentic AI specialist?

This is this human thing, right? This, this, they act as humans, right? That gives me the willies, but let's just go with it.

Um, well I maybe ultimately the idea is to replace entire Salesforce is with Salesforce. I don't know. Well, how about they did it?

Because they can. Yeah. So, so there's just, yeah, I'm gonna disagree in the sense that, you know, I'll take the opposite tack.

What I don't need is 50 applications to do something. And, and, and every day I encounter something where I'm like, Jesus, I gotta log into this other thing over here just to pull that out so you can connect something to this. And I think, you know, in the future, I think most people are just gonna wanna have an AI agent that pulls what they need regardless of what app it's in.

And all these apps just become headless services. You're never gonna have a one AI agent that does all you're look talking about a master agent. I will, I will have a, a master butler that will talk to all these Other firm agents, to the other agents don't want.

And that, and that, and that is something, Salesforce and ServiceNow and the Automation Anywhere or all that's the holy grail, right? This orchestrator. But let me, let me take another tack on this.

And again, I spoke about it on my shimmy says, we are definitely in some sort of m and a wonderland, right? We're seeing deals coming down the pike. And every one of these deals have the word AI or a gen ai, general ai, generative, a, they all have AI involved.

And that's what's making it go. Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is it the sign of a healthy AI ecosystem in the natural order?

Or is it the sign of a sick, there's some sickness here, there's some bubble or what have you, right? Some malaise. And you like that word, right, Mike?

Um, I do and I'm reminded of Joe Kennedy getting out of the market. 'cause the shoe boy told him to buy stock. Exactly.

That's exactly it. That Wasn't, wasn't malaise. What was a malaise?

Jimmy Carter Carter though. Jimmy. Jimmy.

Yes. That was Jimmy Carter. I was, that was Jimmy Carter word.

It was God bless Jimmy Carter. But here's the deal. I, The money being paid for these AI companies, whether they're really just an open source database company or something else, right?

Is, is healthy, right? You're paying a million dollars for a Postgres serverless. Postgres a billion dollars.

Excuse me, me, I don't know what the sale price was on. They didn't just, they didn't disclose it. Well, We'll find out.

They're public. Can I just mention, can I mention one thing? Sure.

That it's kind of a pat on the back for the Futurum group. Um, Salesforce was mentioning, again, the digital labor force and the digital, uh, labor market. And they cited the Futurum group, uh, report that came out that it estimated it to be six.

Wow. $6 trillion by 2030 seems pretty high. But, um, anyway, they're, they're using that as, as one of their, one of their, um, Points.

Yeah, but I, I think we're seeing that pull back because I, I think what's happening there is people are realizing, and, and you know what, speaking of future, actually Daniel Newman wrote this on LinkedIn the other day too. And I, I commented on it that at least between now and let's say 20 28, 20 29, what AI is gonna be much more of a co-pilot than a pilot. It's not gonna necessarily take away people's jobs.

It, it's gonna augment people and make them more effective. That's not to say that at some point in the future, it is gonna take people's jobs. It will, but not, not in the near term, right?

Not in the near term. It it's not, you know, for all those people running around saying it's gonna take everybody's jobs away, that's not happening right now. But again, is it a bit of a gold rush and people are trying to get in before we find out that it's the man behind the black curtain pulling the levers that is making all this Wizard of Oz stuff, right?

And then, you know, if you're not one of the first companies that got in on this gold rush, you get some pretty meager rations, right? You're gonna start seeing fire sales and, and all of this stuff. We, we've seen this cycle before.

It's boom bust and, um, right now we're certainly in the boom, the valuations are really high. If you've got a good, you don't even need a good business. But if you could slap an AI angle on it, one of these, So what motivates this Alan or Kevin?

What, what, what, what motivates this? Uh, I, I feel like this feels, well, o okay, right? But I, my sense, which is based on virtually nothing is Benioff is paling around with his, you know, VC, angel, whatever like that, the whole finance area.

And he wants to be able to go and say, Hey, I bought this company. They're really cool. They do all this stuff because it helps keep the money flowing.

It's not marketing to, you know, the market customers, buyers, partners. It's marketing to the financial community, value Community. But I dunno, I dunno, you gotta look at this as a business guy.

Every company Benioff takes off. The, the board is one less company on the board, one less potential company that one of his competitors are gonna buy or that maybe will strike lightning in a bottle and become a, a real competitor to him, right? He's taking pieces off the board when you are the king or the queen on the chess board, right?

And you have that advantage. You want, you don't mind trading rooks and Knights and Bishops because you know you've got the power, right? As that board thins out, you, you have a strategic advantage.

And, and he does. 'cause he was early in it, he's got lots of resources. He's taking chips off the board.

I'm gonna be deeply disappointed when that $6 trillion in, in GDP or whatever it is, only turns out to be a measly two or 3 million. I mean, come on. Two or 3 million or a trillion.

Another 1, 1, 1 thing about Mark Benioff, you know, God bless him. He's, I, I've known this guy forever. If there's ever somebody who is going to hammer home something in terms of marketing, in terms of mind share, in terms of trying to oversell an idea, it's gonna be him.

So that's why we're just gonna see an acceleration of a lot of AI related news. They also announced it on Thursday, last week, uh, Salesforce announced new pricing system around AI products. So more to come.

Yep. We, I I, I think, you know, we're gonna see a deal a day here for a little bit, and then it'll be interesting to see, though, if the multiples stay high, right? What, what the, what the, you know, sale prices are anyway, guy, I hear them calling your gate.

Maybe we should just have a segment that's deal, deal of the dance segment. I, we, I think we, we have the last three shows. Yeah, Let's make a deal.

I'll give you 50 if you have a paper clip in your, I tell you what, next time I have the chance to, Alan, I'll, I'll, uh, I'll, I'll actually do a walking appearance and I'll get on the plane and sit down and That would be very cool. Yeah, sort of, well, I gotta Shade Boj Simpson get I get run through the airport. Can I get an AI image of Monty Hall for this new segment?

We Could probably come up with that. We come up With that. That's a good idea.

And Jay, why do we have for, for our Guest, Right? Um, I don't know how many people got that one. I know Mike and John did.

Um, all right, let's call a, a wrap on this version of, uh, Textron Gang. I, I'm, I'm, I'm afraid they revoked my, my, uh, my TSA pre or something. Um, we will be back tomorrow hopefully with even more great commentary on what's going on in our world.

Most, mostly about what's going on in tech in our world. But until then, this is Alan Schmo for Text and Gang. Have a great day, everyone.