Techstrong Gang – May 21, 2025

Does Microsoft have their AI Mojo? You're watching Techstar Gang. Hi everyone.

Happy Wednesday. It's Alan Shimel for the Textron Gang. We've got a great gang show for you.

We got people all over the country world this week at conferences, though they're not all here on gang, but we've got folks over at Red Hat in Boston. We've got folks in Microsoft Build. Mitchell, I think is there.

And, and yet, wait, there's more. We've got other ones going on where we re we'll be reporting on, you know, throughout the week. But let me introduce you to who we have on board for today as we've got some interesting things to talk about.

I mentioned he's out at Microsoft Build, he's fu vp DevOps, uh, analyst. Mitch Ashley. Hey, Mitch.

Where are you, man? Um, I'm high top my perch in, uh, Seattle, the Washington. It's a temporary location, but At the top of the needle, at the top of the Needle.

Sit on the needle. Yes. Anticipating more agentic ai.

Any moment now? All righty. Well, you've got, you've got, you got the lookout post there.

Good for you. Thanks for coming on. I know it's early.

Um, we might as well stay out west where he's probably a top his perch, you know, at the Golden Gate Bridge. It's our Silicon Valley expert, John Swartz. Hey, John, how are you?

I'm good. You know, so, uh, speaking of shows, I'm gonna be making my way down to Google. I io in Mountain View, which is about 20 miles south of here.

Uh, but, but then again, everybody's gonna a conference this week. It's, it's crazy. It is a conferencey week.

Um, all right. Moving from there. Do I, I, I, I assume she's home in Atlanta, but maybe she's at a show too, or we don't know.

Jules Z four, your second time on. I hope the Internet's working good. Looking forward to it.

We will see what it does for each day. No, you're not Atlanta. You're in Ohio, Jules.

Yes, I'm in Ohio. No, it's working. De Your guys sake.

I had Atlanta on my braid, but Jules, you? No, I, I'm live in Atlanta, in the home of, oh, the Ohio State. Excuse me.

Yes, I'm in, I'm in Ohio. Um, I, but I've lived in Atlanta. Okay.

But I don't know why I had Atlanta on the brain. I'm playing geography today, but yes, you are in Columbus, Ohio, isn't that correct? Yes.

Okay. Buckeye Country. And then joining us from, uh, Canada.

Maple Leaves. I'm sorry. Yes.

Yes, it is. He's a cybersecurity expert and longtime gang member, Chris Blas. Hey, Chris.

Good to see you there. Thanks all. All right.

So guys, let's jump right into it. Mitch, a lot of Microsoft's making a lot of noise with Agentic ai. Everybody's making a lot of noise with Thetic ai.

But why don't you tell us what, what, what kind of noise is Microsoft making? Well, I, I think it's, it's more of a sonic boom than a noise. It's Microsoft has leaned into AI in a major, major way.

Uh, it, it's kind of shocking, actually, a little bit of astonishing how much they have going on with ai. It isn't just a series of product announcements. I mean, they kicked off the conference with talking about the developer experience and what the developer's job's gonna be of the future.

And, and pretty much set the tone that we aren't gonna talk about job replacements and how many developers gonna lose their jobs, or whatever's gonna happen, or how much code's being generated to replace them. It's really about Microsoft creating an ecosystem for building software, creating software ally with ai, uh, using new techniques and skills. But we'll get there.

We'll get there together. Um, so they're very much embracing the developer community saying, we're developers. That's our, that's our DNA.

That's what we started as. And we're on this journey together. That's, that's my paraphrasing of it.

But essentially that's the message, which I think is, is an open question for developers. Like, what's gonna happen to my job? Am I gonna still have one?

Or is it all gonna be ai? But behind that, uh, there, the kind of comprehensively really leaning into ai, they announced something called the NL Web, which is a, an ability to, to add a, uh, a plugin or a service to your website. So now you essentially have, um, natural language query ability into the content of your website.

You know, something we talked about long, quite a while ago, Alan, some of the, some of the, uh, uh, Textron sites, which have already reached out to our folks and said, by the way, this capability's there now. So that their vision of, of is, is that the web will, everything will have a natural language interface to it, uh, as well as, you know, search engines and all that kind of thing. Uh, but they're also leaning heavily into, of course, the developer experience.

Uh, we got to meet with their EVP of Core ai. They're doing research around what the, the future of the developing, uh, developer experience will be. Of course, there's lots of product announcements.

Uh, they're leaning heavily into MCP, uh, the, um, model context protocol that was created by Anthropic, and not only the releasing support for it, their own, uh, server, MCP server. They're partnering with anthropic on working on continuing, uh, additions to the spec to level it up to enterprise grade MCP. 'cause they really see that, as, you know, that's the thing.

That's one of the linchpins that's fallen into the whole software AI native development that's, you know, gotten fire. Everybody's got an MMCP server. That's 'cause it's fashionable, because that's how AI connects to the world, beyond the data that is, it has access.

Yeah, I could go through a laundry list of, you know, GitHub, uh, code agent, uh, copilot agent is, uh, gone to ga uh, some things that they opened sourced, which is copilot for, uh, vs code. They've open sourced that. There's a number of things that, you know, it just this constant stream.

But all of it has, we are figuring out the future together. We want you to try all these early previews. We want you to tell us what works.

Tell us what sucks. Tell us what we need to change, tell us how you're using it, and we will continue continuously innovate, um, in a way that you don't see big corporations doing. Interesting.

You know, look, Mitch, me, you, John, Chris, Jules, you're a little younger than us, so maybe it hasn't been quite as long, but you as well have followed Microsoft for many, many years, right? I, for all intents and purposes, my whole career has been spent in an industry dominated by Microsoft, right? Probably more so back then than maybe even now.

But nevertheless, Microsoft has been a constant. I live and work, our offices are right here in Boca Raton, right down the block from us is what we call Brick, the Boca Raton Innovation Center. It's actually the original IBM campus where they came out with the IBM pc.

They developed the IBM pc. They still have the room there where Bill Gates signed the licensing agreement for dos, right? Which really set Microsoft off on its pa on its way, right?

Becoming the, the operating system for the pc. Now, the, when m there's two things Microsoft does really well that they didn't get. They never got enough credit for.

Number one, their developer channel developers liked working with Microsoft as much as the Linux heads kept saying, this is the year of Linux on the desktop, and Mac is more secure. And this, that, and the other thing. Microsoft owned the developers.

They did. And the second thing they never got credit for. They had a channel and still have a channel second to none.

Their channel rules. I think the only thing close to them may be Oracle. Maybe Oracle, but Microsoft and Cisco had a good channel too, now that I think about it.

But Microsoft's channel play partner ecosystem, amazing. So, Mitch, when you tell me they are all in putting all the wood behind the developer and their partner ecosystem, that is a sonic boon. That's hypersonic, right?

And, and I, yeah, that's, I mean, they're, they're, they're calling out, you know, the heavy artillery here. And I, again, with everything else we're seeing, I I, I just did a call this morning with Malaysia Telecom, their GPU is a sovereign GPU as a service. They went from seven years ago having two 10 gigawatt, uh, 10 gigawatt, uh, centers right now with ai.

They just did a deal with Singtel Singapore, tell they're gonna have two, they're gonna have 200. They had 10 megawatts. They're gonna have 200 gigawatts because they're thinking AI and agent AI is going to be this big in the, in the, uh, APEC region there, Malaysia, Indonesia, and do China, Singapore.

You know, one of the things I would do wanna point about, point out about Microsoft, um, you, you and I remember certainly the Microsoft of all sort of the death star that, you know, they, they dictated terms, they controlled it. If you wanna work with Microsoft and sign their agreement, whatever, you just, you know, they just expected you're gonna, you know, kowtow and bow and or else you don't get to play. And I'm not saying that Microsoft isn't, isn't a behemoth.

It still is. Um, but there's very much a, a sense of we can't do this alone. We're not gonna do it alone.

We, we're gonna be doing open source thing. We're gonna be collaborating with other companies. You know, I mentioned the philanthropic, for example.

But they aren't trying to, I think the, the lockin concern they recognize is a big issue. And in the world of ag agentic, they can't lock you in. It's one of the big concerns that kept coming up with, uh, developers here at the conference.

And while they don't use the term lock in, I think they're trying to address that. Now, I'm not saying, you know, every vendor wants to lock you in if they could and keep you stickiness in their products and things. And certainly, you know, Microsoft's no different than that aspect, but the, the Borg of Microsoft old is, is certainly not present, at least on the surface.

Maybe some of that DNA is still running around inside the company, but it's a, it's, it's a different Microsoft Y Can I use a basketball analogy? May I, if the, I will try give and, and congrats to the Nick, by the way. Um, in a week where there were more, there are more AI gen related announcements from the biggest companies.

I think what Microsoft did, just given the breadth and the scope and the ambition of what they're trying to do, reminds me of Darrell Dawkins going in for a dunk and tearing down the backboards, like shattering it. I don't, Chocolate thunder baby, chocolate Thunder. There you go.

From, uh, Lutron, But died way too young. Yes, yes. But, uh, in any event though, in a week where we have Google, Microsoft, remember IPMA couple weeks ago, they tried to make their imprint to, to some success, Dell, SAP, this one.

And as Mitch put pointed out, Sonic boom is, is the perfect way to describe it. And, um, I think they won the week. And I haven't even, I mean, we haven't even seen the full, uh, announcement from IO over two days.

Um, I feel that strong there. You have it from the, from the, from the czar of Silicon Valley himself. Microsoft has won the week.

Quote him. Excellent. I, I agree with you, John.

Wait, wait. Chris has, I, I, I think when I look back at this period in my life, Q2 of 20, 20, 25 is gonna have this banner across the top. It's gonna be, you know, how I learned to stop worrying and love the ai, right?

It is really fundamental. I hate to be such a, you know, fanboy, right? You know, and all into, but, but it's everything we're talking about here and the channels.

Alan is a perfect example. You know, as someone who had a, a a, a hand in Cisco's channels, you know, the turn of the century and trying to explain that to people afterwards is the, you know, we've been doing things so simply. Channels, channels is really easy, but it's also complicated.

It's a human thing. You have to actually think about the people involved and translate that, translating that into business terms, even after making $3 billion of 90% profit through channels turned out to be really hard. And this whole AI thing is just, you know, looking, be able to look at relationships faster.

And actually, I, I can, I, I have literally been doing this in the channels world in the last month or two, saying, here's the value. You can actually think through these things fast enough. And it's, oh, you know, I think, you know, I'm willing to say, and look back on this one stand with this, this one is real.

This, this pivot, this crux we're at. It's not just about this, that, or the other. This is business efficiency and efficiency in solving problems at so many different levels that yes, serious, boring companies like Microsoft are making these sort of statements and investments.

That's how big it is. Absolutely. Jules, I wish that they didn't correlate the rise in AI to these massive layoffs.

I think that's the one thing that is evoking concern in me is it's, it's for me, Microsoft is doing this for a while, and the other tech companies, the PR of it could be wonderful. Look how we're able to make humans better with this new technology. Instead, we're gonna lay you off because we've got the new AI technology, which means people are afraid to embrace.

So I think that what I would hope that next step is, is not only Microsoft, um, uh, distributing this technology, uh, acting as a leader, but showing how they can keep people and they can introduce technology to make their people more efficient, less burnt Out, more productive, Right? So that, that would, I would say they did. I would say they've won the week, but I think that they also made a statement when they, um, initially came out and made that big investment, OpenAI, we knew this was coming.

They were gonna get what they could out of this investment. And I was excited then, and I'm still excited now. You know, That's, that's an excellent point, Jules.

That's a really good point, because remember a few days earlier, Microsoft had that, their biggest layoff in several years, they're announced. I think there's gonna be about 6,000 layoffs. And I think that's something that we should keep our eye on.

With all the investments these companies are making into AI in terms of operating expenditures. They're not gonna be the, the last company, the last big tech companies to pair their, their payroll. No, it's coming.

And not just tech companies. Not just tech companies. I'll tell you something, he's gonna do it.

So I, I think here, here's the sequence from Microsoft. They announced a fantastic quarter. They had a fantastic quarter, and they said, we had such a great quarter, we're gonna lay off 6,000 people.

But that's, but that's the mentality. We're going to get leaner. We're gonna get leaner.

This was a lesson coming out of COVI. Companies have been able to, they found out that they can get leaner and still do more. Whether it's AI that's empowering that or something else.

They can be leaner and still do more. We can do 25% more with 15% less. And it's, it's counterintuitive.

Doesn't seem to make sense, but you're seeing companies across the board do it. Now, I, I happen to see an announcement from Chase yesterday, JP Morgan Chase, uh, Jamie Dimont, they're gonna lay off over the next, I forget how many years, maybe 10% of their, of their workforce, 10% trimming. And they also, Jules, to your point, cited AI as a reason why they're gonna be able to do it.

I think also though, the release of deep seek at the cost and at the speed made people realize that we, we, we have too much, uh, uh, you know, management too much fluff that I think we need to get rid of in order to scale faster. And I think that that's had a huge influence on how fast they think they should be moving. It actually made them wanna move even faster, which means to them labor is, is slow.

We, we need technology to, for speed, unfortunately. So in my, in my first comment, you know, for those part of Strangelove fans out there, that was what I meant. You know, this, you know, this is a pivotal time.

You know, I know these tools will solve a lot of problems. Oh my gosh. You know, that's just amazing.

Now, they may call some as well and tools. You're exactly right, messaging from companies at this time right now. Please, folks get that right.

You know, let's, let's not make the, the, the downside more likely, We shall see. All right, let's take a break here on the gang. We're gonna come back and, uh, Jensen Wong is keynoting a conference.

Shocking, shocking. You're watching Text on Gang. Hey everyone, we're back here.

So our friend Jensen Wong is, is keynoting multiple conferences as part of this hectic conference week. But he, he's not just, uh, you know, he's not, I wasn't gonna say he is not an empty suit. He is not an empty leather jacket, I guess is a better phrase for Jensen.

But, uh, John, what, what, what are we hearing from the, the, uh, pied Piper of Nvidia? So The globe trotting, Mr. Wang has made his way from Riyad where he appeared with a bunch of tech CEOs and, and the president for his, uh, Blackwell giveaway Chip Day.

Um, he showed up in Taiwan at Coffee Text, which is a major technology show, and they announced a ton of, of, uh, product announcements. Something on the par of Microsoft, but I don't think with as much influence, because they do this so often, um, they talked about a, uh, next generation GB 300 AI systems that highlight their efforts, diffuse GPUs and CPUs into connected design for faster training and inference of AI models. Um, they said they are now going to let other chip makers adopt its proprietary envy link technology through a variant called NV Link Fusion.

And some of those partners will include Marvel, Qualcomm, Fujitsu, and Mediatech. They, um, also announced a, um, uh, let's see, oh, DGX Spark AI workstation. They showed robotic play that they're going to do.

They're also announced that they are going to be working with, um, Foxconn on, um, and the, and the t Taiwan government to build an AI factory supercomputer that will deliver state-of-the-art Blackwell infrastructure. They made a ton of announcements, and he, um, again, is everywhere he is. I mean, he's the pied piper of ai, and, uh, he sprinkles his magic dust wherever he goes and makes his imprint.

But in a sense, what's interesting to me about Nvidia is they do a lot of announcements. They do about three or four big announcements a year, and usually there's always something new or, or original or, uh, something that advances the game. And I, I, I marvel at their ability to do so.

I think they, I think, and it just occurred to me, they do a better job of creating the narrative about what this technology is, what it means to other people, and where it's going better than anyone else. And everyone's along for the ride with them, seemingly, in terms of partnerships. You, you're a hundred percent right, John, you know, for all intents and purposes, they've done an amazing job of, when you think AI think Nvidia, more so than think Open AI or anthropic or Microsoft or IBM or any of these things.

When you think ai, you think of Nvidia. And, and so kudos to Jensen and the whole team there. Um, beyond that, though, at the same time with these announcements, they're thinking, how do we move Nvidia beyond the GPU when you think ai, right?

So it's tying it to CPUs, it's developing that software ecosystem, right? And look, there was a time where Intel used to do this really well, right? Their, their, their, uh, their optimized chip sets and everything.

Um, you know, back in the day was the Wintel monopoly as we called it. But I mean, certainly Nvidia seems to be doing just fine doing this, and they're pulling in other hardware makers in addition to software. Mitchell, thoughts, rest of the panel?

No, I think you're spot on with Nvidia. It's, it, they are just a juggernaut. That's my description of Nvidia, because they just seem unstoppable, even when their stock price takes a hit.

Or, you know, we don't know if we can have enough water or power to on the planet to cool every Nvidia GPU. Somehow Jensen sells three more data centers, you know, across the world this week. And it's the next biggest of, you know, anything that's been done.

And of course, we don't talk enough about the software side of it. Um, the IT people are now, um, doing more agreements with Nvidia of integrating their software. I think it was Dynatrace just did one, uh, announcement about, uh, embedding or integrating their observability capability into, uh, into the software frameworks that you build AI applications.

So, you know, they're quietly building up the, the fortress of software to, uh, you know, their competitive ranks as well. So it, it's, it's impressive. It's, you know, from, from a gaming company with really cool boards, putting in my PC to play the latest game to where we are now is just phenomenal.

It's, it's hard to believe. It's funny that you say that, Mitch, because Jensen Wang Ma basically made a comment. 'cause we've come from being that gaming company to 90% AI company.

That's just who we are now. And he, in fact, made that point. And I think in terms of messaging, they are really good.

And can I make Ashton, I'm gonna make a really bad disclosure about myself that I'm, I'm still kind of kicking myself. So they have this incredible infrastructure behind the scenes to create content. I turned them down for a job about eight years ago.

Didn't come with any stock grants or options, did it? Oh, John, Not enough. John, John, I'm losing respect for you here.

Well, look, we all come to the fork in the road. We go left, we go right? And we have to live with those choices in some alternate universe.

There's a John Schwartz with a goatee, right? Like dark Mr. Spock, who's, who's living high on the hog right now on his Nvidia.

Well, I know Who that person is because I, I, I know who that person is 'cause I referred him to the job because he had two young kids. So I do feel good about that. At least It makes me feel any better.

You just sell, sell the stock at the right time. 'cause this all reminds me of Cisco in 98, right? And when I joined Cisco, we can say that every packet on the internet goes through our sheet metal.

So run up the mic, walk in and sell firewall, right? And that lasts for a while, and it's inevitable. And it's, you know, Cisco's, you know, I was there for the, let's, let's buy half of Silicon Valley, pave it, put up new buildings and all match.

And, you know, it was wonderful. And, and, you know, 27 years later, we'll, Nvidia still be where it is today. It's theirs to win or lose.

But this is the, this is in a sweet spot. Yeah, I think if you, it reminds me of Steve Jobs with Apple. I think really what we're buying is the cult of personality.

Um, and Jenssen's come in and he talks quite a bit on social media about his background and how he started. And he talks about his, you know, not so very humble beginnings and how it's built him to grow this essential company. So he takes you on this really long ride where you feel like you know him, and so you trust him.

And I think most of what I see, if we think about Elon Musk, we think about, um, uh, Steve Jobs, they had to sell an idea. They had to actually sell you a dream, and then they had the other job of making it come true. And I think he is making it come true, but I think we have to see when he is talking what he sees, and it requires a little delusion, or it requires you to have some sort of foresight.

And ultimately, I feel like NVIDIA's done a great job in, in branding. I think NVIDIA's done a, a tremendous job in creating relationships and telling stories and creating a narrative where you feel like you wanna go along the journey. And unlike John, you don't wanna miss out.

So literally, I will, I'm excited about what Nvidia does next, but I know they'll keep surprising us because they really do want that sort of closed ecosystem situation that, um, apple created. And unfortunately, the Apples of the world, most recently, there was an article that they're falling behind. We're not getting these new innovative, you know, completely different products.

Every time we see another phone, you're like, oh, the camera's a little bit better. Oh, you know, we've got one more app. So I was like, where is Now it's keep in mind, you know what I was gonna, that's a really good compare Oh, good, good comparison between jobs and, and, and, and Jensen, because Jenssen's been around a long time and Jobs went through his wilderness era where he was at next, and he was kind of largely ignored.

And he came back and, and, and sparked Bigger and better. I, They, I dunno if there will ever be another reality distortion field equivalent to Steve Jobs. You remember that term, where he could paint this future to make you believe it.

You know what, and, and let me bring this full circle and we'll take a break. That's, I think a key to Microsoft's resurgence is, you know, when Bill Gates, bill Gates passed the, the baton to Balmer, and Balmer was a great administrator. He grew the company, made a lot of money for their shareholders.

But I don't know if anyone called him truly a visionary. No. In the sense that Bill Gates was No, I, but Satya, Satya seems to be, and so that's the key when we look, Tim Cook is the bomber Yes, Exactly.

To jobs, gates, yes. But this, but, but Apple needs, I mean, Satya's many things he said that we repeat, and one of them is every, every business is a software business that he didn't originate that, but he really popularized. But he also said, SaaS is dead.

And every, I mean, Satya is a visionary leader, not an administrator. Jobs was visionary. Jensen's visionary.

Are you visionary? Let's take a break here at Textron Gang, we're gonna come back and let's talk a little cybersecurity dysfunction. Imagine that you're watching Textron Gang, Discover Textron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation.

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Hey, everyone, we're back here at techron Gang, you know, all right, we did our ai, our mandatory AI for the day, as it seems. Let's talk a little bit about cybersecurity. Unfortunately, maybe a little dysfunction in cybersecurity.

You know, the Linux Foundation and their, uh, open SSF and everything, they reshoot recently shared a framework for building effective cybersecurity teams. I don't know, Jules, I don't know if you've had a chance to look at this Linux Foundation, uh, framework, but you've done enough cybersecurity and worked and built teams. What do you think?

So I think it, um, furthers what NICE did several years ago. Um, and, and what I like about what Linnet Foundation did is that they've added AI engineers, uh, solution architects. And so they've moved from the traditional security architect, security analyst, security engineer roles that we initially started this industry with.

What I like also that Lennox Foundation has done is in collaboration with open SSF, they're very heavily focused on how to integrate security into DevSecOps, DevOps, um, looking much more closely at the gaps between what the, the, the skills of the people in the industry now and where we need them to be in order to, for them to be effective. If we talk about this issue with ai, I think the problem is that getting people upskilled trained and ready has taken so many dollars, and we don't have much to show for it. So what they built out is a cybersecurity skills framework that can be integrated into certain technologies.

It can be used for a career road mapping inside organizations. And it's referenceable so that companies of all different sizes have the ability to understand who they have in their, um, in the, on their teams, what skill sets they'll require, and then also to build out long term the kinds of people they need in the organization across the board. And so, I like it.

I will tell you, I'm rarely ever impressed with security frameworks. I'll just be honest there. But I, but I, I admire the people who see the problem and immediately come up with a solution.

And so I was happy to see it Last dolls on, right? You know, and, uh, I'm glad to see that at the end, because, you know, if you're watching out there and you, you know, you're part of these conversations with me, you know, yes, I hear what you're saying. Maybe it's not perfect.

However, as we're talking about in the last block, you know, there are these large communications entities out there in this context. Alliances Foundation is a great organization with great folks working in it. You know, some of them have put this together.

Um, I haven't looked at at as closely as Jules has, but I scan through makes logical sense. It's think ing things. Yes, yes.

In fraud. Yes. Let's be quiet.

Let's take off, off prob, you know, on a different topic right now, we're talking about demographics and millions and hundreds of millions of people. How do we address this endless issue of training, right? So I'm encouraged to see, uh, significant duplicable organization like this, advancing this topic.

And like you say, jus adding some of the current things to it, not getting stagnated. And, you know, we do need to continue to move to have, you know, just like in, like we're talking about the last block, you know, it's better when it's not just single power blocks or, you know, a handful, you know, uh, you know, our, you know, for the, the insiders in the, in the industry who all debate the fine points with each other. That's how we will address this.

Not by having blind foundation or any federal government finally say it have multiple sources of truth that will continue to resonate with each other. So, you know, with with, with age, sometimes comes wisdom, sometimes comes ality. But here, here's where I, where I am with looking at frameworks like this and how to better organize our cybersecurity stack, if you will.

I don't wanna call it a silo. I think for a long time within cybersecurity, we spent a lot of time naval gazing about how to organize your cybersecurity team. What was the role of the ciso?

What was the security architect? Do I need, uh, you know, a guy who's sitting at the moat door, the castle door over the moat, right? So that, that, you know, the, the big honking box watcher, let's call him, right?

Sitting in the soc watching my, my firewall and my IPS systems and TMS and all that. Then I had another guy for vulnerability. Then we had another part of the team for AppSec, and we had, you know, uh, uh, uh, web app firewalls.

And as we moved to the cloud, we had cloud security engineers and identity people. And, and these were all mumble jumbled as part of our security team, often with people wearing multiple hats. Well, I, I think we've made a lot of progress over the last couple years in sorting that out.

I hope we've sorted that out. But then we also realized that in order for us to be effective, we need dotted lines, liaisons, champions, Jules, as you mentioned, in the DevOps team, in the developer team, in the network team, which we was always there, right? But in the platform engineering space, in the SRE teams, in the business teams, in the business teams, how do we roll out security education to the sales guy who's clicking on links, right?

So this is where I applaud the Linux Foundation, in that they appear to embrace a new vision of what the cybersecurity team is. And maybe there's still that inner core that are cyber, cyber, cyber, you know, cyber times three. But there's also people who aren't full-time cyber people, but yet play a vital role in, in an organization.

Cybersecurity. Cybersecurity, the, the best, the best talent that I've ever identified at my company and in other companies are not in security. Now, they have a unique perspective that they bring to bear to solve security problems.

And what I'm finding is that leaders have to be good at building teams. And oftentimes, I mean, even as a woman, I think, I, I like to refer to sports teams because I'm, I'm an Eagles go Eagles fan. Um, but you know, you can't have a team full of quarterbacks Tell about you need a Philadelphia Eagles fan.

Yes, I went to temple In Ohio, Temple law, I went to Temple Law. Oh, temple. All right?

All right, I'll give it to you then. You cannot, You can't come outta Philadelphia without being an Eagles fan. It is illegal.

Just like, go, go, OSU. So the OSU, um, so o ultimately the, the idea is how do we get different kinds of people, um, together to solve critical problems? And why I laugh at sort of these frameworks is we did not develop an AI framework before we developed the ai.

Like, AI has come, let's just say, after security, but they figured out how to get it out the door, make it effective, make it usable. We're still debating that insecurity. Why is that?

Because sometimes I think we overthink it. We're trying too hard to make it perfect, and we're gatekeeping who can do it. And I'll be honest, I am a communications person who was in sales for 20 years with a law degree.

There is nothing that said I would get into cybersecurity, but I'm damn good at it. And it's because there are other, um, correlating skill sets that I have that never make it into the framework. I understand business.

I have good presentation skills, I can write, I can read, I can present. Those skills are never in the framework. And so we have a bunch of very technical people who then minimize the importance of, uh, good writers and GRC people over and over again.

So I think that it's a great start. I think what's missing is we need the other business skills to, to correlate some of this. And then we need to keep it dynamically adjusting, not just written on paper, and then we, we live with it.

Amen. Amen. As someone who, like you also JD Degreed, no cybersecurity formal training.

I, I agree with you, Mitch. Here, Here, you know? Amen.

Stand up and cheer. What, what kind of do to help you, Jules? But I think that was spot on.

I think this, this topic is a perfect litmus screen. You know, we can keep putting this into the internet, you know, and seeing what color it changes, see what the maturity level we're at, you know, security and training, right? We've been through this from the, oh, we need to have these, you know, perfect security people, you know, in charge of our security at that point, right?

And on the training side, we need to train every person on hearth not to click run things, um, looking it, you know, find at an early maturity level. We just had our first conversation ever on the topic, and that took a decade or three. Right?

Now, we're, you know, to the point of this, this, this segment, we have organizations like the Linus Foundation that have, that are embedding a lot of these things that we're saying, right? And this, this business processes security is not a place, and it's not a whip. It's a function of integrating this entire thing into our, into our business and, and, and life structure.

And we take everything we talked about in this episode, right, from ai, we're just, it's, it's opportunity and scary and so forth. We don't know how, what, we're going to have none to address the downsides yet. I don't expect, frankly, you know, oh, we'll see my age.

I might live to see the end of that. This will take us some time. We're somewhere down the path.

And training and security is a perfect indication of how far we are. And well, Don't know if you know this, but here, you know, I'm, uh, Microsoft built and they're getting ready for the next keynote. They heard both you, Jules and Chris talking.

They're, they're doing the wave around the audience. It's just, it's amazing to see. They're, they're like going to church.

It's, it's, uh, it's a revival going On here. Absolutely. No, it's all good.

It's all good. Fly, fly, Jules Fly. Alright.

Hey, by the way, thi this Linux Foundation story you could get on Security Boulevard. ai and Microsoft Dig Agentic. AI Mojo is also on Textron ai.

I like to mention that in there. Whether you're watching this live on, well, it's recorded. But whether you're watching this Wednesday morning or as a podcast or on demand on Text, strong tv, YouTube channel, text, strong tv, or the Textron tv OTT channel on Amazon, apple, Roku, iOS, Android.

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Gang. As usual, we've got a full, if you are watching this Wednesday morning, we've got a full text, strong TV schedule coming at you right after. Stay tuned for that.

But until tomorrow, Mitchell, John, Chris and Jules Koor, thanks for joining us today. You've just watched Textron Gang. We're out.