Techstrong Gang – September 12, 2024

Hello everybody. I'm Mike Biard. Today on the Gang we'll be talking about, well, Larry Ellison and Oracle, I think have weighed in on just about every it issue you can imagine, including nuclear reactors for data centers.

Then we're gonna talk about these new Apple phones that finally, is AI a national security threat. You're watching Textron Gang, we'll be back in a minute. All right, folks, we're back and our guests today are David Nicholson joins us again from the Futuring Group.

David, how are you? Great. Good to be here with the gang.

Good to see everyone Still hiding out in California. Still still up in the hills, although I was in, uh, the lovely Bay. Yeah, yesterday.

Alright, also hiding out in California as usual is our own. John Schwartz. John, good to see you again.

Good to see you, Mike. I'll be headed to the Salesforce Tower later today to hear Mark Benioff preview the Dreamforce conference, and he's gonna talk about AI agents. All right, well, we got all kinds of luminaries, wax, and philosophical this week, so we'll save that one for tomorrow.

And finally, we have Hope Lynch joining us from North Carolina. Hope as always, great to see you again. Great to see you, and thank you for having me.

Right. Let's jump into these Oracle announcements. 'cause boy, there was a lot of 'em, but I think I got 'em like parked in the three different buckets, or maybe two, depending on how you wanna look at it.

But the first one from an industry perspective at least, was, you know, Oracle making buddy buddy with AWS. Those two have been throwing barbs at each other for as long as I can remember and providing some entertainment along the way. But, um, David, let's start with you.

I think you're familiar with a lot of this stuff. What's your take on, how significant is this alliance between Oracle and AWS and Ymo Cats and dogs living together? These surely, surely these are the signs of the end times.

Uh, but no, in all seriousness, um, uh, I, as, as we say, uh, I did some time at Oracle, you know, I did my time. I was actually CTO of the cloud business group, uh, from 2016 to 2018 in that space. And at the time, uh, Oracle was looking at cloud as a potential existential threat and taking it very, very seriously.

And the strategy was to come up with a variety of ways that what Oracle cells can be consumed. So, you know, the, the centerpiece of that is the exit fill in the blank line of systems, completely integrated systems. In 2016, we were talking about this thing cloud at customer, where we would install a box in your data center, but you would interact with it just like it was cloud.

And we sort of half jokingly talked about, wouldn't it be cool to offer these as a service in other hyperscale clouds. It just took eight years to get to the point where these things finally landed in AWS. So this is a long time coming.

Um, I personally am happy about this. Uh, I think it sort of proves a point that we were all trying to make that there's plenty of room in the cloud world for Oracle. And, uh, and, and it's been, you know, Oracle's been trying to take a page out of the Azure handbook for a long time, kind of moving people from on-prem into cloud.

So I I, I think it's, uh, for, for insiders, it's expected. And, uh, yeah, coopetition is the name of the game in our industry. Yeah, I enjoy the drama, but it seemed to me like I already had Xa in the Oracle cloud, and I also could use it on other clouds already.

So, um, unless maybe I got some giant contract with AWS that I'm trying to fulfill. I mean, most of the people who are gonna put X in the cloud, I think already did it. But what's your take?

Well, I, I mean, come on. That's, that's sort of the, that's sort of a silly thing to say, Mike. I, you, yeah, you can get coffee at Starbucks, but don't you want all, don't you also want to be able to get coffee at every, uh, every gas station and, uh, every, uh, every bagel, kiosk and everywhere else?

And so it's, you know, you, you wanna blanket the area anywhere it exists. You wanna have your offerings installed. And, uh, and so it's, you know, it's, it's sort of market segmentation going after things.

And then there's the very real effect of having, in this case, you know, a day-to-day machine, um, uh, kind of co-located physically with other things that are happening in a customer environment. Oracle would love to capture all of that, but Oracle's realistic and understands that it might not necessarily capture all of it in one place. So it's sort of incrementalism.

All right. But to your point, I'm Irish and grew up in a household with tea, and there is no coffee in my house. So there you go.

Hope, what's your hope? What's your take on all of this? I mean, is this just Bender drama inter fighting, or is it meaningful to customers?

I think it could potentially be meaningful to customers. The, the piece that really catches my attention is the focus on the data. Data is always, always a problem.

How do you manage the data? How do you ensure you, you understand the data, what will you do with it? And Oracle's focus on AI data, large enterprises now maybe is making it a little more accessible, maybe a little more user friendly, um, and maybe can help a lot of them transition more towards being digital first operations instead of saying, uh, how do we bring AI into the enterprise?

If it is, if it is part of the Oracle offering and it integrates with the big three hyperscalers, um, it's removed a barrier. Mm-Hmm. I know John, you know, you're out in the valley, and when I was out there, you know, there was the valley and then there was Oracle.

It was like Oracle was its own little ecosystem that really wasn't integrated with the rest of the Valley, per se. Um, is in your sense that that's still the case? Does Oracle live in its own little Bubbles?

Yeah, it does, but I don't, well, ironically, ironically, I live across the slew from the former headquarters of Oracle, which is in Redwood Shores, which I'm sure Dave spent a fair amount of time at. Um, it's a ghost town, basically, because they've relocated twice now their headquarters. It's, it's also then it, it's figuratively and, and, and, and I think literally been an island in tech, in my opinion, for years.

Um, there's the outlier of Larry Ellison. I know he was very good friends with Steve Jobs, and there was a time when Oracle was part of the mainstream mix here, so to speak. But in a sense, it's kind of a little bit off on its own.

It's physically not here, so it's not top of mind. Uh, it it, it's interesting though that, that Ellison still does these very interesting CTO talks. I've watched a few of them over the last year or two.

Um, so he's still in the game. He's still relevance, but it, it's interesting that he got involved. And I'm thinking about this week in general is pretty crazy.

It's like a frenzy. It's like an F1 qualifying and, and, and fighting for polling position. We've got, uh, Salesforce and Slack are gonna come up with news on ai.

We've got the Apple News Monday, which we're gonna talk about next. ServiceNow did something on Tuesday. I, to show you the stakes and how they've been raised in the last two weeks.

I've, I've received two texts from Benioff, and I got one yesterday where he was citing some Gartner research that calls into question data security and governance concerns associated with Microsoft 365 copilot. That's not an everyday occurrence. So the, the stakes have never been higher, and I think it's really wise for Oracle to lay its claim to the AI cloud mantle as we, as we say in this episode or this, this segment.

So, and again, Mike, it's, it's a scrum, it's a free for all, and Oracle is kind of diving back into the fray after kind of being a little bit on the outside. Yeah, I looked at the AI stuff and I liked what they offered in terms of the capabilities, but David, and one thing that left me scratching my head is when I think of Oracle, I think relational databases, I think structured data. And when I think of gen ai, I think of unstructured data and everything, but Oracle, so, you know, is Oracle gonna be relevant here?

Because it seems like their powerhouse is on the structured data side, which isn't really driving the gen AI revolution from my perspective. How dare you say that, Mike? How dare how dare you say that?

Notice, notice I'm notice I'm, I'm, I'm evading the actual answer to the question. Of course, of course. That's their, of course, that's their legacy.

But I think to hope's point, it, it's, it's all about the data. And, um, and, and so, um, I I, I, I do think they're well positioned to make the, the, the transition. Um, but yeah, I mean there have been, there have been a lot of, uh, ironies in that regard in tech over the years.

When EMC bought VMware, EMC storage was the last storage you would want to use in a VMware context. Actually, network appliance NetApp was what you wanted. Uh, and Diane Green was happy to tell people that this the then CEO of, of VMware.

So, so yeah, there are some little odd, odd, uh, twists and turns, but no, I, I think they're well positioned. But the one thing that that's brought to mind on, on the subject of ai, uh, at some point, it's gonna kind of sound to us, I think like, Hey, this restaurant just opened down the street. Really?

Tell me about that restaurant. They use electricity. Okay.

Okay. I mean, isn't everything, doesn't everything by default have to have some sort of AI infused in it? And isn't AI kind of like electricity at this point?

Or at least we've talked about it so much. Maybe, maybe it's still three years out, you know, 'cause we accelerated in our conversation, but at some point, it's just not gonna be interesting for these, these CEOs to stand up and talk about ai. It's gonna be, it's gonna be table stakes.

All right. Hope that we jumped the AI shark, because I'm old enough to remember when Wang Systems was, you know, talking about we're applying AI to word processors, and here we are. I I, I think we, we are getting very close.

If we had not, I saw an image recently where someone was making, just making light of all of the announcements around AI and all the pushes, and they were showing kitchen implements spatula now with ai, right? So it, it is very much, um, it does feel it is an opportunity or a competition to make sure that your company name, your product is mentioned somehow in some way with AI just to, to maybe placate investors, to reassure current customers, whether or not you are doing something that is truly helpful, truly revolutionary, truly moving, um, the practices forward. But I think within that, however, there are some, some lights of, oh, this could be something really, truly in the future.

And as fast as everything is moving, I think we may not need to wait as long for the shakeout though, from this as we have for other technologies where it feels like, uh, you know, it took a decade or more, uh, businesses are going to want to see the returns quickly, and if they don't see the returns, um, there won't be a way for industries to continue investing. I think the one part of the Oracle story that I do like is they're talking about bringing AI to where the data is. And we've talked on a couple of shows now about the fact that we're actually gonna bring compute to the data versus keep moving data into the cloud and hope for the best.

But, um, David, from your perspective, is the world by definition now hybrid and we're just gonna, you know, let good old fashioned computer science dictate what runs where I, you know, so Hy Pal hybrid, yes. But in the sense that it, in, in my mind, it's all it, it's all information technology, and some of it is gonna live here. Some of it is gonna live there, increasingly it's abstracted.

Um, but back to hope's earlier point, there is a data has a gravity, uh, of its own. And it's a, it's, it's, it's a, it's a challenge that will always be faced with, and that gravity has to do with things like latency, the, you know, where do you store it, uh, sovereignty, governance, uh, privacy issues, all of these things. And so, um, so yeah, we're gonna see data here, there, everywhere, and, and we're gonna be in a hybrid world for as far as I can see into the future.

All right, folks. Well, John, we also kind of looked at this, but it seems like to me, and I think you were poking at this, there's just a world of difference between when companies are talking to shareholders and when they're talking to IT team. And most of the announcements lately, they feel like they're trying to talk more to investors in Wall Street than the actual They are.

They are. They're trying. They're, yeah, exactly.

They're, they're trying to assure them that they are at the front of the line, they're front of the race. And that's why I alluded to Salesforce. I don't mean to pick on Salesforce, but I hear more from that company than anyone else because there is this thoughts, whether it's correct or not, I think it is correct that Salesforce was late to the party and they're playing catch up.

And in a sense, their event later today speaks to Wall Street and it speaks to what's happening to their stock, and that that actually applies to Apple a little bit with this iPhone announcement because their stock hasn't performed that well this year at all by its standards. We could talk about that later, but there's a lot of pressure on these companies. As you're right, Mike, these are announcements as much for the investors as they are for anyone else.

All right, folks. Well, from an IT perspective, I would just say they're all fashionably late to the same party. And it's okay because the IT guys are still figuring out which end of this AI horse is up.

But folks, that's enough for Oracle for now. We're gonna come back and start talking about Apple in one minute. Discover techron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation.

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And John, you were, uh, privy to what's going on in the announcement from these folks, but as I understand it, you, you basically went to the movies this week, so tell us what happened. Yes, so I, for years before I, a long time ago, far Galaxy Far Four Oh away, I used to work at the USA today, and I worked at Doug Jones. And when I was in those capacities, I would go to these events twice a year.

There was the Worldwide Developers Conference, and then there was the big, as it turns out, iPhone announcement, I went to the original one, which was what, 2007, January, 2007. During was during CES, and they were incredible, uh, stagecraft. So yet Steve Jobs was, I think, the single best public speaker in terms of the, the business community who would do this flawless presentation.

He would slowly roll out all their announcements from the least important, of course, to the most importance. And then he would drop the one more thing on us, which was the big surprise, followed by the special guest, whether it was Winfred, Maral, or, uh, so someone else, you two would actually play all these different incredible experiences. Now, let's fast forward to what's going on in the last couple years where basically Covid had a huge impact on this.

So there is no presentation. Basically, Tim Cook walks out on stage and says, Hey everybody, I want you to watch this video. They start with an advertisement, which is what Apple always did in their playbook.

They'll show you a new ad, which gets who's and s from the crowd, mostly of journalists, by the way. And then there is now a series of video vignettes. They're all beautifully produced, very slick.

They show the product. You're basically sitting there in a movie theater watching this presentation. And then at the end, cook will come back out and wrap things up.

And then there is a, uh, curtain is raised, so to speak, at the Steve Jobs Theater now in, at the spaceship. And then you go and take a look and you do the demos. So that's what's going on.

So it's, it's a lot different experience, and I think it kind of parallels the experience of the products. And what I mean is that there are a lot of incremental announcements. Uh, you know, here's a new camera, better Battery Life, faster iPhone, and you kind of got a little bit of that on Monday with the iPhone 16 line.

You know, there's some pretty cool gadgetry to it. There's a camera button where you can do like these visual searches of things. There's a semi AI infused iPhones, which are gonna be rolled out.

The features are gonna happen, it's gonna take a while, it's gonna take some patience. But I think for Apple, what's so important to them, and this is echoed by, uh, financial analysts, is that they believe the shipments for this line are going to exceed the original estimates. So they're expecting to hit about 90 million compared with street expectations of 80 to 84 million.

And, and they really need to do this because iPhone represents half of their revenue. And it's been a little bit an alert the last couple of years in terms of sales. So here is their big opportunity.

It's, it's basically a glorified advertisement, which is brilliantly done, gets an incredible amount of coverage. It's important to Apple, and it's also important to get involved in the AI race. But in a sense, as we said, they're all kind of late to the game.

And, and we'll see how it pans out, David, all puns intended is Apple simply phoning it in. And So, as speaking from the perspective of someone who wants there to be something to want from Apple, I literally arrive virtually hoping that there's something they're gonna show me that will spark my, my inner consumer desire. And, uh, and, and, and I would say that I have convinced myself that moving from my iPhone 14 to the 16 will be, will be fun and cool because camera functionality and because this new thing that Apple invented that no one had heard of before, ai, I, uh, I, John, it's Apple official intelligence or something like That, right?

Apple Intelligence, Yes. But they, in, they, but they invented this, these, these functions. And in all, in all seriousness, I know some you can't take me seriously ever, but, um, but, but I think that what's gonna happen is the penetration of some of these functions that probably all of us here had been playing with, with Claude and Chat GGPT for some time.

I think a much broader segment of society is gonna be exposed to these things. So I think that it is going to be, it's not, uh, it's not a trivial thing that iPhone sixteens are gonna be falling into the hands of people and people are going to start becoming kind of acculturated to, to, to AI functionality. And, and one thing I wanna say on, you know, uh, uh, kind of going back a little bit, uh, John mentioned with Salesforce and their AI stuff coming up, by the way, um, because Salesforce is such a workflow thing that people use, um, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the AI stuff that they roll out, just like the Apple AI stuff, it doesn't seem as shiny or sexy, but it might actually produce real value more quickly than some of these other things.

So, but definitely on the Apple side, you know, like You said that Yeah, I'm glad you said that, Dave, because in a sense it's the mainstreaming of a technology. So that's what Apple does. I mean, we've talked about this before, but I'll say it once more.

So you think about there are 300 million iPhones out there that have not been upgraded in four years. A fair number of that of that is gonna happen. And I also believe that Apple has always had this.

S we talk about the Snowflake, uh, approach to things where they take time, they look at something carefully, they put their own imprint on it, they add the security features and the privacy, which is one of their hallmarks. It does well, it, it creates this cascading effect that in a sense they benefit most from, but it also benefits the rest of the industry, the market they're in. And I think that's, that's kind of what, where they're coming from again.

And with ai, it will work. I think it's gonna take patients because the, this, a lot of this, uh, stuff will make its way into the ecosystem for Apple in a phased manner over the next few years. But it's gonna happen.

I'll, I will give you some perspective from my wife on this subject. 'cause I was talking to her, she's a big Apple fan, and she looked at the announcement and then the hadn't sent awesome, I should be able to afford the Apple 14 now. So she's just gonna upgrade to the previous generation.

That's what I do too, actually, I I, I do the same thing. I wait until they come out with a new model and they discount the hell out of the previous models and then, then I move in. Yeah.

So one, one part though, in all of this that may not, uh, ring bells for the average consumer that is just interesting to me about what Apple is doing, um, is it's on device ai. That is a very different thing. I have a Samsung phone, they made an update recently, and it was all, ooh, all of the AI bells and whistles.

It is software driven. Something has to go back to Samsung. Apple is saying we have it built into the hardware, it's going to process on your device if you want to keep it private.

Maybe now it's, it's more private because Apple has always pushed privacy. Um, I do wonder if they will be able to say it moves faster, more private. Are they going to figure out a way to leverage that for the average consumer?

I really don't know, but I'm fascinated to see how that plays out as well. So what you said hope is, is completely correct. Um, that has always been Apple, I think especially the last few years.

They have leveraged their privacy, their security, their mantra against others, particularly against Meta. 'cause they see meta as a threat on, on a variety of ways, especially in augmented reality and in in, in, in the use of ai. They have always used that.

And, and it's like, we are, we are not gonna rush into things. We're gonna think this through. You're gonna be safe within our ecosystem, which in a sense can lead to some problems with the government.

But what, that's another story. Uh, but they use that to hammer away it other companies competitors, but especially meta. And, and I can, and, and let me represent collectively the I PC community.

When I say, what are you talking about on device Unique? We've been screaming about this for the last year. Where have you been?

It's like, yeah, whatever. Apple comes out with it. Wow, look how, look how snappy.

It's exactly how snappy it's, that was, That was always the thing that made me laugh. I would be at the Apple announcement and we had to tweet out all this, this crap, right? So we're doing it in real time.

And then I'm looking at the responses and they're all from the Android site saying, oh yeah, we did that a year ago. You did that two years ago. Mm-hmm, welcome, welcome.

You discovered this. But the irony is Apple of course has this rabid fan base, it has a huge fan base, it has a lot of influence and people will never consider going outside that ecosystem. So resonates with them, Eric.

So is Apple just become this fast follower now? I mean, there was a time in my mind where they were kind of like, thought of as an innovator, and it sounds like this week they just kind of did a consumer pitch. But I wonder, you know, has Apple, is there a little shine off the apple there?

David, let's start with you there. No, No, that's great. No, there's, there's something to be said.

There's something to be said for being an intelligent second mover in a market, um, acting methodically. Uh, do you wanna show up to a party on time and naked, or do you wanna show up well dressed, you know, 15 fashionably late? And, and, and so I think that, um, there is, there is a power to that.

And in order to leverage that power, you, you have to have a certain amount of market power. So I think they're, they're being intelligent about it. Um, look, I'm as much of a look, I, I still have a rabbit.

Do, do you even know what a rabbit R one is? The large action model device that is, that, that has been supposedly doing this stuff forever. Um, I immediately bought one of these things.

Guess what? I'm perfectly fine waiting a year for all of this stuff to sort of mature and be on my everyday carry device. These things are a part of our lives.

It's not a gadget. And I think that's one of the things about ai, when AI becomes an everyday carry, everyday use infused part of our lives, something that you grab with the keys to your car and your wallet and your phone, um, that's when it's really gonna start making a difference. And I'm, and I'm okay waiting for that.

But yes, I'm, I, I'm an Apple fan boy, have been since the two E so I admit it. Hope. Do you think we'll get to a point, and we kind of alluded to it, uh, in the last segment, but that AI just becomes so transparent on these devices that we j we just take it for granted and we don't think about it anymore.

I, I, I do think so. And that will, I believe, be the best outcome if it is so easy to use that the customer doesn't think about it easier. What, what easier pathway is there now to market and sell a device?

Because it's so easy. I don't need to learn to do something maybe too different. It feels natural.

It feels like it's just the way things should work. And especially if I'm the one leading that charge and I am now setting the standard, uh, it's beautiful. Um, there has to be a way to make AI easier to access.

Um, and this could be it, put it on the phones, make it easy. Um, that is the best gateway. Well, John, I can get a little suspicious sometimes when people think, make it so easy that I don't have to think about it.

'cause then I'm like, well, what the hell are they up to? There must be Some ulterior motive. Well, that's, you know, I mean that's, that's the beauty, I guess that's the beauty in the curse of Apple is the simplicity.

You know, I was going back to something that, uh, Steve, just, so we did an interview with Steve. Jobs got like 20, 25 years ago. I can't remember the year I was at the San Francisco Chronicle.

I remember the one thing we asked him, we asked him, where are the companies that you admire? And the first company he mentioned was, without any hesitation, was Disney. And he said, the reason why is because they make things that have a lasting impact that are loved from generation to generation.

That's what I want to do. And he kind of alluded to this idea of getting into the movie industry, which you, you batted down when we asked them that. But it's this, this whole idea, you take your time, you do something, you simplify it, you make it accessible, and that's hard to do, right?

Um, that's not easy to do. And, and, and it says I give them credit, but what I do not give them credit for is that this kind of, and I'll say it, it's kinda like this stale act every year, September 9th or September 10th, whatever the date, usually that those two dates where they come out with the phone, they hype it to the, to the, to the sky. And then there's just little pieces that are interesting.

The stock doesn't move. In this case it was flat, usually goes down the day of the announcement. And, and I, and it's just wish that the press, and I'm gonna point a finger at myself among many, would, would be a little bit more critical and not, how do I say this?

Not, not, not get caught up in the, in the spin cycle as much as we have over the years. 'cause I think I was as guilty as anyone doing that. Which other holidays do you hate, John?

I mean, come on. I mean, come on, come on every No. Up the lights.

You know, we, I know it's horrible. Come on. It was a, it was a Fun event.

But, you know, here's the thing. I, the la people were taking selfies. They were bringing dates to these announcements.

And after a while I was like, we're, we're being manipulated. And this is like, not really journalism. This is advocacy for a company.

And I just, I, I needed to take a shower after some of these events. So I do love Holidays. No, I like Easter and I like Thanksgiving and I like Christmas.

So it's like going to Burning Man or Fire Fest, depending on where you eat it. Well, burning Man has become commercialized. You know, burning Man is not what it used to be.

It is not nothing is what it used to be. That true? Yeah, that's true.

You know, if my lawn, I know The older I get, the better I was. I guess as far as Apple is concerned, uh, John Schwartz is gonna be the Grinch this Christmas and Wow, Wait till next year. All right, folks, I love my one.

I think we're out time on Apple. We always enjoy talking about Apple versus Samsung, the phones, but hey, do what makes you happy at the end of the day. But AI's got some cool stuff in it, and you should definitely check it out.

It's just a question of when, not if. All right folks, we'll be back in a minute. All right, folks, we're back.

ai talking about how the government is trying to at least come close to, and maybe soon we will identify AI as a threat to national security. I don't think that comes as a major surprise to folks, but it's nice that there'll be a formal document about it. John, you wrote this story.

What is your sense of what's going on here with all this stuff? Why do we even need a document to tell us that, you know, a sword cuts both ways? Yeah.

Well, a year ago, remember President Biden came out with this executive order about ai and its promise, its risk, its rewards. So this is kind of an outgrow. So there's this classified memo, which evidently has been leaked to several news organizations, including the Washington Post and some trades.

And, and it basically looks at, uh, AI and how measures that the federal government must adopt to preserve and expand US advantages in science, business and warfare. Um, it looks, it looks at, uh, the strategy it centers on defense and intelligence agencies and, and government agencies in turn would then work in public private partnerships. And here's where I get a little nervous with AI leaders like OpenAI, anthropic, deepminds, XAI, and Meta ai.

So ultimately what the White House wants to do is create this policy that in a sense, aligns with international law, in a sense, will make it safe, make it, uh, responsible use of ai, so it cannot be abused. Uh, and the reason why they're doing this in particular is because there is no national legislation. There are only state bills that are circulating out there, including one in California that address this topic.

So they want to create some sort of framework, at least for now. My only concern is that, again, when we first heard about the executive order, there were some meetings with between the government and the AI leaders, which sparked a lot, a lot of criticism from everyone else in the AI community. They're afraid that the largest companies are gonna set the precedent and the rules and set the advantages for themselves.

And, um, that's kind of where we are now, that I, I believe that memo will come out by early October. So it'll be interesting to see more of the details. And, and, and really it affects, David, what's your take on this?

And I'm asking the question from this perspective. I don't think, you know, our rivals around the world and totalitarian societies are gonna trouble themselves with such niceties about ai. So, um, I know that we wanna do the right thing, but you know, on a practical level, to what degree can we actually do something when we gotta compete with all these folks that are gonna use AI to advance their own agendas?

Yeah, I'm, um, I freely admit that I'm, I'm skeptical anytime anything associated with government, um, approaches me and tells me that I have something to fear and that I need them to protect me from this thing that I should fear. Um, and, and that goes for all sorts of things. And I think this is the latest.

I think that my big, my biggest concern at this point, and, and by the way, there's, when, when people say ai, there's the specter of Skynet, right? It's this, it's this artificial super general intelligence that, that, that becomes sentient. That's not what we're talking about here.

But I think a lot of people will interpret it to be that. Um, and I think the last thing that John said is telling, it's the idea that, um, this increasing corporatism creep that we're seeing in, uh, in the US is ai, the, you know, the AI discussion is just the latest iteration. So I'm super, super skeptical about all of this.

I see what we're doing with regulation, uh, related to sensitive technologies, trying to keep them away from China. Um, you can't have, have a factory in Norway that's using machinery that's produced in the US using certain technology to deliver things. It's, I, I, I don't know.

I just, I'm really, really skeptical. I'm not buying the whole threat thing. Uh, I think that this is fear being used, uh, to and leveraged against us.

And, and I may be a minority in that regard, but that's my primary thought. All right. So David, when somebody quotes FDR saying, we have nothing to fear, but fear itself and must tie you up in nuts, right?

Well, I see that as guidance. I, I see that as I see that the, the quote was taken out of context. It was likely guidance for a political playbook.

It's like, this is what, oh, you know, there's not, there's nothing that these people fear more than fear itself. So if we could, so the part they left off was, so if we could instill fear in them and dangle the carrot of safety, we'll get 'em to do anything. It's like they learned the government learned from the tech industry, fudge, fear, uncertainty, And doubt, right?

That's exactly right. I'm sorry. That's, that's, that is my, yeah, that is, that is my concern.

I don't think the government is, they can't, they can't stop the progression of, of technology moving forward. They can't stop this technology from getting to China. And by the way, go on.

You don't have to go to China, go on YouTube and watch some videos of cities in China that you've never seen. They're leaving the west behind, you know, so, so, you know, so let's get, let's, let's get real. I just, I got, I'm just so tired of the, of the nonsense we need when the aliens need to arrive and fix this, all of it.

Yeah. Hope, what's your take on that? Are we being left behind overseas?

I mean, Must everybody, uh, yes, absolutely. Um, in, in China is an excellent example. Uh, a few days ago, a story crossed my path where they were diving into how assertive, let's use that word.

Uh, China's being with their work around ai, they are taking it by leaps and bounds, and it's not a secret then in the US government. We are understaffed and under-skilled for technology overall. And when you now focus on ai, we, we, we just do not have the, the manpower at the moment, which is why I think the government usually, um, like you were saying, corporatization is looking at the commercial entities and going to them asking questions.

Um, yes, China will be a threat. Uh, and when you think about the misinformation and influence campaigns that could be launched with ai, um, by, by bad actors, um, and especially if their skillsets way outpace what we have in our own government, that that could be a threat over time. Definitely.

Uh, imagine a, uh, an announcement from a world leader that didn't happen, but it's indistinguishable from the real thing. Now the markets are moving, smaller governments maybe are also moving. Um, there is definitely a threat there.

But, um, I think our government, in an ideal world, writing a memo, sure, write a memo, but what are you actually doing? What is actually a taking place? Um, I'm sure they're not gonna tell us that, but, um, I, I'd prefer they take action versus, uh, writing memos, honestly.

So, so, uh, Schumer, Senator Schumer from New York, when they had a couple of these, these meetings, I, I talked to a couple of the companies that attended them, and China was first and foremost, a topics A, B, and C. Um, you know, one thing interesting too is that I, well, I Nvidia is not on the list of companies that they're gonna be partnering with because they're too busy, the government's too busy looking into in Nvidia and what it's doing, and I kind of wanna just bring this up in, in a sense, NVIDIA's being punished. I, I, this may be, I'm editorializing, but NVIDIA's being punished or being successful in jumping into the fray early in carving and trailblazing a path.

And I think because they have such high market share, it makes them a targets, but they're a victim of their own success. I mean, I'm, I'm, and I feel like as I'm talk, I'm, uh, kind of talking as a, as a somebody in, in place of Alan right now, but I, I wanna kind of come to the defensive Nvidia, uh, in, in the fact that the government, on one hand wants to mitigate the risk and wants to partner with companies. But on the other hand, it's also investigating those same companies, many of the same companies for their market position.

Well, the government, well, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know, I, uh, I have to respectfully submit that, um, yes, you put a target on your back and that means you have to behave. So, and, but as long as you're behaving, you should be okay. You'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll have to go through the shakedown.

You'll have to figure out how to lobby better, right? Failure to lobby is probably yes, could, could, but hold on. But hold on, hold on.

Having said that, having said that, your CEO can't go to very, very large corporate customers and tell them, if you don't buy the entire stack, you go to the back of the line. And so if you do that, and if people record you doing that, and if the Department of Justice, uh, interviews a whole bunch of people and it has a whole bunch of anecdotes that's called the tying contract, there's nothing illegal or immoral about having monopoly power. But if you do that, you're in trouble.

And, and, and I'll, I'll, I'll leave that there. We'll see if there's fire where this smoke is coming from. I tend to agree with you generally, John.

It's just that, it's just that there are no, I'm glad you said, yeah. Uh, we, We need to talk. Dave, this is a good story.

You're breaking news right now. Yeah. So We'll talk about that.

No, I'm, I'm spec I said if I said, if I said if, Well, if, if Bears research, if Bear's research, You Mentioned the word lobbying, that's also where they cropped up. When I talked to a couple of experts in this field about this and whole memo, they said, you know, in a sense, the companies that you mentioned that are gonna partner also happen to be rich in resources and very adept at lobbying. So in a sense, they're gonna set the precedent like they always do.

What's new I would just point out is the government is a big entity, and the DOJ is not called up the Department of Converse and going, is this company a national treasure? Before we investigate them, I think they're just looking at the laws and saying, this has been broken. And it's our job to enforce that.

And maybe, you know, if president one day wants to give him a pass, we'll see. But I don't even think the president can give you a pass. They get you if your hand's in the cookie jar.

Well, Part Of this, this strategy is led by the recently created AI Safety Institute, which is at the Commerce Department. So I just throw that out there. Makes me feel safe just knowing that they exist.

Uh, I just have one more comment on this. So there are plenty of people who work in the government who are patriots. They do yeoman's work, they don't get paid a lot, and we don't train them a lot.

So, you know, hope as we come around full circle on this, you know, is it our problem as citizens? 'cause that's what we let the government do, and we don't invest enough in getting the right people to go work for the government. 'cause well, it's, you know, what am I doing 25 years and taking a pension and going home?

Yeah, I, I do know in the past, mm, five years or so, the federal government has made some efforts to make it more appealing to be a technology worker in, in the federal government for, for the United States. They've raised salaries, they're looking at training, they're even adapting more of what they've seen as practices in the commercial sector of let's look at agile, let's look at the cloud. So they are moving and they are changing, but the change is slow.

So it, it, it does need to be a balance between, um, national security and making it appealing to the people who want to work there. Salaries are good, um, but salaries, higher salaries have not been enough yet. They, let's say, if they could have some sort of wonderful marketing campaign or, or something to help people understand, uh, how they have changed and the efforts they're making, that would be a step in the right direction.

Us as citizens, yes, we should be concerned, uh, about the steps they take or don't, uh, because the fallout will eventually, um, impact all of us potentially. But, um, I think they're making steps. They're making strides, but not fast enough compared to what, uh, other countries are, are currently doing.

All right, folks, I think we're gonna leave this here. We definitely need more expertise in the government for good because, well, there's a brain drain going on, right? All the money in AI is pulling people outta universities and government positions.

Everybody's trying to get rich. And well, if you're in charge of maybe managing and governing all that, maybe you need to ball more than we have currently taught you to do. Hey, folks, I wanna thank you all for being on the show again, as always, sharing your insights, and I thank you all for watching the latest episode of The Techstrong Gang.

You can find this episode and others on our website, and of course, stay tuned. We have a huge lineup of Textron TV content coming up right behind this. Until then, we'll see you next time.