Musk’s AI Lawsuit, Broadcom’s VMware Moves, and DARPA’s Patch Push | TSG Ep. 912

Apple open AI in cahoots. Who would've thought you're watching? Textron Gang.

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Textron Gang. We're here talking about the latest and greatest events of the day, once, one more time.

And we're gonna talk a little bit about this lawsuit that Musk has filed against OpenAI and Apple, talking about, well, are they in cahoots and are they trying to lock everybody out and make only their apps available on these various marketplaces? Who knows? I think we've seen this story before, John.

Mm-hmm. Yep. It seems to me that there's also a pattern here, and some folks are saying that, well, Musk is just trying to harass these poor old folks, but what's your take on what's going on here?

Yeah, so only just to quickly recap, as you said, it's history repeating itself. So Musk, uh, a X AI in particular filed this antitrust lawsuit in federal court in Texas. It claims that Apple and Open ar colluding the stifle competition in AI through this anti-competitive scheme, quote unquote.

Um, the, and we've heard this before, or the, the, the claim is that Apple's App Store is DeRio deprioritizing rival chatbots and super apps that include grok and x this something along the same lines that we heard from Epic Games and Yelp when they went after Apple. And for the most part, apple won that case. Uh, they're saying the same thing happen.

Same thing with Justice Department and Google Chrome and favoritism on the App store there. So this is related, as you said, to a a, an agreement between Apple and Open AI to integrate chat GPT into the iPhone and other devices, including MacBooks. Um, as you said, Mike, this is interesting in that Musk is going to court, which he's legally, uh, able to do, and maybe there is some element of truth to his lawsuit, but I think in a sense he's also, uh, instead of battling these guys through strategizing and innovating, but he's suing and, and perhaps trying to slow down the process of their agreements.

At the same time, Musk has been suing OpenAI seemingly, or has some sort of scheme to take over open AI for the last couple of years. So it's part of this, uh, ongoing pattern of harassment that OpenAI claims he's done. It's, uh, it'll be interesting to see what falls out.

And one, one caveat, and I'll throw this to the gang, but one caveat to keep in mind is that there will be some sort of ruling in the Justice Department Google Chrome case, and we're gonna figure out what the remedy is, if there is one, probably any, any day now. So, um, again, it's, it's the latest episode of Open AI versus Musk and how Apple's been dragged into it heavy. That thumbs it up.

That's how I feel, Terry. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

You know, this is kind of, I mean, not that there isn't a bit of truth to this, as you said, you know, and, and, and we've seen a pattern here, but Musk, I mean, it's, it's almost like does he have an ounce of self-awareness or does he even care because, you know, he's unfairly put his thumb on so much, and especially in the last six months, and I, I just, uh, I don't know. It is, it does seem like a bit harassing to me. Tom, do you, Tom, do you think, and all brands, Yeah.

Tom, do you think that app stores are gonna be the primary vehicle for distributing AI agents in these types of apps? Or might something else emerge as a way that we gain access to these things? I'm wondering, you know, does Apple still reign Supreme in terms of that app store or the one that Google has is, I mean, not Google, Samsung has its own thing version of that I think, or Google and Samsung do as well.

But, um, will other marketplaces and other distribution vehicles become more relevant in the age of ai? It depends on where you think the AI agents are being run. If you think they're primarily being run on laptops, then no, the, the app store model is not going to be the one that's gonna dominate because most people don't use the Mac App store or the Windows App store for that matter.

They, they prefer to go out and download the software. But if you believe that the install base of mobile devices is still gonna be the primary way that people consume things, then absolutely. Yes.

I mean, how many people use Gemini as like their default search engine now? Uh, how many people have a chat GPT app on their phone or use the integration that Apple's built in to, to do any kind of, well, pretty much anything. I think what you're running into here is, well, this feels like a fishing expedition because all Apple has to do is prove that at any point over the last year that anything that wasn't chat GPT ranked higher than every other thing.

And, and we know that it did several times, actually. Um, the thing that I think the XAI and Elon Musk people are looking for is one of those smoking gun emails, right? Like, you know, the evil, like tinted fingers, let's work together to manipulate this.

So XAI never wins. Ha ha ha ha. You actually have to type out the laughing too, otherwise it's not in incriminating enough.

Um, but, but that's what they're hoping for, right? Because like you said, the, the Epic Apple lawsuit really was won by Apple on almost every count except for that one count that ended up causing all of this thing. Because then, you know, uh, Sweeney gets to run around and claim that he defeated Apple and Fortnite ISS back in the app store, and now everybody has to do this.

And honestly, that's the one that opened up people to be able to take payments directly from That, right? They went, they went like nine out of the 10, uh, claims, um, epic did. Yeah.

But all it takes is that one, and that's what they're hoping for here. And I mean, all you have to know about why this was filed, the way that it was, was look at where it was filed, wasn't filed in California where all those companies are headquartered. It was filed in the state of Texas.

They're looking for a very friendly judge to let them go fishing. Yeah. And they're likely to Find, it's kind a funny, funny too, is that, um, sorry Terry, let me, I'll really quickly say this is funny too, is that if, if considering Apple a threat in the AI space as, as of now is, is a little laughable.

There's even reports that Apple is so desperate to get back in a race, they're gonna think about the rumors about buying Perplexity or Misra. So, um, again, but I know I think more of it's an antagonism to towards app open ai. I mean, it's just, yeah, It is, John, but, but it goes back to the question you asked me about the App store.

Apple is not a threat to open ai, X ai, any of these massive AI focused companies, just like Microsoft Windows was not a threat in the browser market until they started bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 98 and suddenly the default option on the desktop was Microsoft Internet Explorer, not navigator, not Mosaic, not any of those other ones. That's the real reason that an explorer took off is because for all of us who have like our preferred coffees, who have our preferred cars, who have all of these things that we've built in our lives that we will go out of our way to do, most people won't cross the street for a nickel to save on gas. They'll just take whatever the default is.

And, and that's where the other argument in this whole case falls apart. Well, you know, uh, Apple's working to, um, you know, push everybody else down by only offering chat GPT, and yet I didn't see anybody from XAI or Perplexity or Google ponying up the cash to be on that little dropdown list in iOS, because that's what this is really about. This is not an anti-competitive, um, backroom, uh, you know, take over the world kind of deal.

This was about money, plain and simple. This was Chad, GBT and Apple got together and said, what's a dollar amount that would make this thing pop up? And they came to that dollar amount, and that's how Google is the default search engine on an iPhone, right?

And the only reason that you have an option to drop outta that list now is because of an antitrust ruling. And I think that we're gonna see that in the future is that as more companies pay up to get on that list, maybe they'll randomize the way that it shows up or whatever. There'll be an algorithm that prevents chat GPT from always being the first um, option.

But my question there is, will XAI pay to be there, or are they going to attempt to use this court case as a way to say we have to be included in that list for free? Otherwise, you obviously are discriminating against us. So, John, let me ask you this.

Are other companies likely to join this lawsuit or Yeah, that's, are they Yeah, I was thinking about that. Yeah, that's, that, that's, that's a really interesting question. I think it's probably inevitable, but I'm not sure which companies would do it.

I mean, I know in the Epic case we had Yelp and others were kind of the quiet partners. One. The one thing that, uh, you know, when Tom was mentioning the smoking gun email, I, with Apple's history, these things crop up.

It happened in the Epic case, uh, to lesser state Google. Uh, so maybe there is something out there, but, um, I do think other companies are going to, are probably gonna join, but these are usually like the chorus companies that are part of the, the background noise. But, um, yes, it's inevitable, I think.

And what kind of AI agents do you think will be downloaded? Because I think we're talking about different things. I feel like most AI agents are gonna be kind of in app already.

They're gonna be something I downloaded from an app and I'm gonna buy them or while I'm in that app. But I guess there's gonna be these so-called, uh, super apps that are AI agents that do all kinds of tasks for us. And I'm not sure everybody wants like one agent to do everything.

Tom, how do you think that we're gonna wind up using these agents? I think we're gonna pick our preferred one that gives us the best answers or is useful for a very specific purpose. And we're gonna go to that one for that purpose.

I mean, look at what people do now. They, they use Claude for coding. They use chat GPT for language analysis.

Um, it like, it makes me think back to the days when there was actually a way to natively tweet from iOS, right? Instead of opening up the Twitter app, you could actually like craft a tweet from the share sheet. You know why you can't do that now?

Because it sucked. Like all of the advanced features that people were putting into the Twitter app to do all of these crazy things never got ported over because it's integrated into the operating system, right? Like it is, that's one of the reasons why Apple had to decouple so many of their apps from the operating system in the first place, is because they can't rev them fast enough to keep up with everything else.

And I think what's gonna end up happening is as the, the rate of change that you're seeing from all these AI applications, adding new features, rolling out new models, that's only going to be appealing to customers if they can be on the latest one. And if you are just simply sending the, uh, information off to the cloud to be processed, that's one thing. But I don't think people wanna super app, right?

Like there are things that Gemini is good at that it sucks in other places. And there are other apps that are probably gonna come along and be like, Hey, we are the AI app for solving math equations. Well, if you're in math class, you're gonna want to use that one.

And I don't think you're gonna just, there's not one, a single one stop shop. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So that's why I'm wondering why I don't think the dominance factor maybe is big an issue here. But John, what are the odds that the president of the United States gets involved in this conversation? Well, he's at, he's at odds with Musk.

So Musk's outta luck. Um, unless Musk goes kissing the ring, I mean, I, I'm, I'm thinking to, uh, to, I don't wanna get go down the rabbit trail of Intel, but, and we saw how that worked out, how the government's, uh, intervention happened there. It was through back channels.

So I don't, I don't think he's interested in this. If anything, he's gonna throw his considerable weight behind Apple. If he does, I don't think he cares or knows anything about this.

Sorry, go ahead, Terry. I was just gonna say, given his seemingly tight relationship with Tim Cook these days, I think, uh, Musk is outta luck. And then possibly, you know, Trump will be behind, uh, apple if he has to choose sides.

But, you know, you never know. I mean, I think he always tries to, to throw his weight around, uh, and, and sort of randomly, I mean, look at the Cracker Barrel logo thing. I mean, those guys caved in a day, right?

To go back to the old one, I think I, I think if on a whim he decides he's gonna get involved, that's he'll do it. You, you know, you, you're right about his, the, the, the, the relationship with, with with Cook, but I also, and also open ai, right? That's the whole, uh, Stargate project, which, you know, he and Altman were very tight on, which is still trying to, trying to resurrect itself despite what people, despite all the facts about it, I don't know.

I would look at it this way. Um, Apple's taken what, 30% of all the sales that go through that store from third party. So maybe the United States government can, can collect 10% of that.

What do you say When you, if you run a number 30, if you run the 30% figure by Trump, when he becomes aware of it, yes, they will become involved. Well, somebody's gotta pay for that golden ballroom. So I think, you know, this is as good a place as any take a little money.

I, I'm with Tom though. I do think that this is a fishing expedition and I think it's gonna make fascinating reading and I think everybody's gonna want to see what's in those documents. And, um, at the very least, you know, even if it's not illegal, we'll have a better sense of what the actual intent is, right?

And then more people will know what Go on, can see. Yeah, you can see some embarrassing disclosures unintentionally, um, on the part of Apple. They seem to have a history of these things.

All right, well folks, we're going to stop this conversation right here, but, um, we're going monitor this closely 'cause I know John's gonna be looking for those court documents just for, if not for anything, for his own amusement, but I'm sure he'll share it with all of us. That's True. That's alright.

All right. We'll be back in a minute. Guess Discover Textron group, the epicenter of tech innovation.

We are your go-to for reaching IT leaders and practitioners worldwide. Our secret impactful content that sparks awareness, engagement, and top quality leads with us. You'll access editorial websites, streaming videos, virtual events, custom content analyst research, and more.

Join our satisfied clients. 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 gonna have a little chat now about Broadcom, which had its big VMware Explorer event, which is where I am and why it's so dark here at this moment. 'cause it's the wee hours in the morning still. But it's an interesting time here for Broadcom and VMware.

'cause of course there's a lot of concern about the VMware licensing, a lot of consternation. There's only about maybe a slightly north of 4,000 folks here. So Broadcom's clearly saying, you know, we only want a certain select type of customer here.

And they're not funding this whole thing the way they used to. But there's a couple interesting announcements. And the first of which is that they are taking the AI services that used to be an add-on for VMware Cloud Foundation are now part of the package.

And what they're saying is that, well, everything's gonna run AI and VMware is gonna be the best platform for running inference engines, and that should just be part of the standard offering. That kind of changes the economics of AI and the enterprise for a lot of folks. And then they turned around and partnered with a MD and said, we'll also support the A MD GPUs alongside the Nvidia GPUs in that platform as well.

And then there was some other interesting news that they did on the DevOps front where, uh, they first they partnered with Canonical and Ubuntu, and then they took the Argo CD and made that part of the add-on services for VCF, which is VMware Cloud Foundation if you're not following along. And what they're saying in that end of it is that that too will become a standard capability of the platform and maybe a lot of folks won't be able need to go buy a separate continuous delivery platform versus a CI platform, which might still be separate. But Tom, I know you've been following Broadcom closely in all these years and we've done a lot of stuff with them lately on your side of the house.

What's your take on what's going on here? I feel like they have made VCF nine kind of their, their transformational platform, right? Like they, they listened to the customers, they've said that these are the things that we're gonna integrate.

We're adding all these features. Please don't go to the cloud. Please stay with us.

We know we can run things in containers now. And when you look at the, the announcements that came out of here, they really are shifting and they are tripling down on this fact that you can run containerized workloads inside of VMware. I think that what they're effectively saying is, no matter what happens in the future, you can still use the same interfaces that you've used before, the ones that you're comfortable with, the ones that your people have been trained on, who cares what's happening in the backend, right?

That's, that's magic. We'll, we'll figure out how to make those workloads work. And at the same time, the the news about the A-M-D-G-P-U thing, honestly, that's just smart.

Like why would you get locked in on Nvidia? Yeah, they're the market leader. Um, that's a little bit if from my networking background, that's like saying, well, we should make the CLI of this device look like a Cisco device because Cisco's the market leader and everybody's gonna know how to use that.

Just ask literally anybody else who uses ACL I, uh, they, some of them will do it kind of contrarian on purpose. And I think that that's what they're saying here is I think VMware is expecting, there's going to be a bunch of contrarianism in the market saying, I purposefully choose not to use Nvidia and want to use a MD because I don't know, they're cheaper, they do this workload better, whatever. And if they're one of the few platforms that supports running on top of a MD GPUs, boy, they're gonna make a lot of money off of those folks because we'll pay almost anything to not run Nvidia and almost means about $5 less than what NVIDIA's charging.

True. Although everybody seems to be locked into Nvidia 'cause of that Cuda framework that they have. And I don't think a MD has got a lot of traction around its alternative.

It's a tough sell, right? But that's what you've always wanted, right? Is you want to create, create a framework that everybody uses.

NVIDIA has cuda, um, you know, Intel for a long time use DPDK on the network programming side until other things came along and, and kind of supplanted it. But if you can get ahold of a group of people who specifically choose not to use Cuda for one reason or another, like that's that target market, is it a huge target market? No.

Like it's, it's never going to be like the the trillion dollar money maker that everybody is chasing now. I mean, remember when a billion dollars is a unicorn? Oh, that's passe now.

Now we're, we're really in the stratosphere, but, but that's an underserved market that I think that they could easily pick up. Um, and not having a framework is not necessarily a bad thing because it gives companies a chance to innovate in areas and create their own frameworks and maybe come up and be the next cuda or at least Cuda light. Mm-hmm.

John, we've talked about these issues with, um, the licensing program outta Broadcom for a while now. They, um, you know, they, they stopped short of doing a victory lap here, but it was pretty damn close. I mean, last quarter they think they noted that the software infrastructure revenues were up 25% and they have another financial statement due out, I think in the next couple of weeks.

And everybody's talking expecting that it might be similar levels of growth. So it doesn't look like a lot of customers fled at the end of the day, or at least not the customers that Broadcom cared about. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

There was that concern, right, of them hemorrhaging to that. There was, I think companies like Nutanix and others were trying to make hay from, from the, the, the, the coupling. And it's, I think the signs are encouraging.

I I'm gonna give you a little preview of something that Daniel Newman wrote for Forbes that's gonna come out soon. He did talk with the CEO of Broadcom, I believe in Las Vegas Hawk Tan. They talked about VMware AI XPU development future of custom silicon.

And based on that and what he saw, and based on what a lot of the stories you wrote, Mike, he Daniel has come to the conclusion that in terms of AI infrastructure, this company's gonna be one of the pillars along with Marvell, uh, technology for X-P-O-X-P-U growth acceleration. Um, so yeah, it's, it's situation is better than maybe it looked 12 or 18 months ago. Um, so there are encouraging signs.

Um, Broadcom to me is always like an interesting company whenever it's involved with coupling or teaming with another company. Everyone looks for the flaws and the whole arrangement based on the history of the company. I know it's a long, kind of long history there.

Um, so I think, I think things are more encouraging and, and yeah, when the results came up, came up, that might might surprise some people. Tom, I kind of wish somebody would write the Harvard Business case study of VMware. Here's a company that we have been so dependent upon in it circles for years, and yet it keeps being bought and sold and it's kind of like, almost like nobody wants it and then they kick it around for a little while.

But has Broadcom finally broken the code to make VMware a viable entity even more, you know, and profitable enough that it may just stay with Broadcom forever? Is this the final home? You want the Harvard Business Review?

I want the company man YouTube channel. 'cause it's only gonna be about 10 minutes long and it's gonna be like, and then bad things happen and then good things happen. And, And it's gonna be in the AI narrative voice too, which where there'll be a lot of repetition of the same gap.

The thing with VMware is it is the least likely company for people to care about. It's, it reminds me of a lot of the companies in Silicon Valley. Like you're driving down First Street and you see companies that you recognize, right?

And they're these tiny little office parks. And then you see a company like right next door and they have this enormous building. You're like, I have never heard of this company in it before.

What do they do? And then you look it up and it turns out like their biggest customer is the Department of Defense. You're like, oh, that's why I don't hear about them.

Because they're not trying to market to everybody. They have one or two customers that really rely on us and that's good enough for them. I feel like VMware's always been in that spot, right?

Like they, they kind of sub subsumed the entire market. Like if you go back to 2002, managing individual servers, managing storage arrays, all of that stuff, that was like a career path. And now it's not because we don't manage things that way.

I would actually venture a guess that without server virtualization cloud as we know, it wouldn't exist. That that's a pretty easy argument to make. The problem is, is that just like every other company that develops this technologies, they're always going to get supplanted by companies that come in after the fact that build on what that, um, development has happened and do things a little faster, a little cheaper.

I mean, that's basically what Amazon and Microsoft and all the cloud companies have done. I think Broadcom has figured out a way to essentially kind of put the full weight of that company behind what VMware is offering. You say that you've made them profitable.

Yes, Broadcom absolutely has made them profitable at the expense of a lot of smaller companies that were VMware customers. And, and that's an easy argument to make too. Like we know that when you basically have cut out the bottom tier of licensing, you're effectively saying it's, it's the Apple problem, right?

Apple will never sell a hundred dollars iPhone. There are a lot of people who would buy a hundred dollars iPhone, but Apple's not going to sell one because for them the value is in it being something that needs to be attainable. That that is basically like a flagship product.

Like there's no version of VCF that is not a flagship product right now. So I think what you're gonna end up seeing is Broadcom's gonna continue to push this and they're gonna make money hand over fist until someone comes in to cut them off at the bottom. And we're already seeing companies that are lining up to do that.

Um, HPE obviously has done that with Morpheus and, and they're putting that package together. A lot of the smaller competitors that were going against VMware for a very long time, like scale computing recently got acquired so that they can basically gear up to go after that small to medium sized market. So I, I think VMware as a whole will probably be okay.

But you also notice the other thing that Broadcom has done. When VMware got bought by EMC, it was still VMware. Now it's VMware by Broadcom.

That's the end goal here. They want the IP of Broad of what VMware offers, but they want it to be associated with Broadcom. And I think that that's ultimately what's gonna happen.

VMware will end up being successful as a part of Broadcom, just like Catalyst is still a very successful part of Cisco. I think Broadcom did a better job of reading the, the IT people, and I bring this up because there's so many people in this industry who still view themselves as I'm a VMware administrator. They describe that's their title and their job function, and it's how they identify themselves and they're not rushing to give up that platform or go learn something new.

In fact, you know, when Kubernetes came out, everybody thought that that was gonna be the end of VMware. And here it is now VMware is still rolling and Kubernetes is, you know, starting to gain more traction. But lo and behold, Kubernetes is now embedded in VCF and the same IT administrators can manage that and maybe VMware will make that accessible much more so to mere mortals than right now.

Kind of still requires software engineers to build and deploy. But as it goes along, it seems like maybe VMware has figured out that Microsoft strategy where we just kind of continue to subsume everything into the platform. Is that what we're really looking at?

I'll throw that to Tom. I think so. I mean, what's, what's the real value of what the company provides, right?

Is it the name or the technology? And I think in this case, VMware's real value is its technology. And yes, I completely agree with you.

If I bet against every technology that came out that was going to be the VMware killer, I probably could have bought VMware because everything is gonna, oh, this is the thing that's gonna do it. Yeah, this is the thing that's gonna do it. Just like every new technology solution is the end all, be all solution that you're ever gonna need.

It's gonna take care of everything. If you wonder why I'm so kind of blase about AI is because I've heard this about software defined networking, OpenFlow, ATM, lane, um, uh, you, you name it, even 8 0 2 point 11 wireless was gonna be the ethernet killer. It's like, yeah.

And, and that honestly of all the things that came to pass more than anything else, and you still have to plug it in with an ethernet cable, but at the end of the day, I think that VMware is going to survive just like IBM has survived, just like Oracle has survived. But it won't be the same VMware that we saw in 2005. It's gonna be a radically different company doing radically different things as a method of survival.

You know, the the what the, the one thing that was interesting, and I and my mike answered the question you have too, Tom, was, I was gonna ask, how does this company, which I think of as almost like a cockroach, how does it, how does it survive? Uh, at every turn. I mean as like, it's almost considered it, it's been considered quasi irrelevance, you know, in the mainstream press at least for so long.

Um, and I, and again, again, I just chalked up to the, the proponents of it who use it and their reluctance to, to let it go. Uh, so it's just fascinating Here. Here's the argument that you have to make for that.

It's not the company surviving. I think that VMware is the company of thesis because this is not VMware. This is the conglomeration of VMware getting bought by EMC, bought by Dell, bought by Broadcom.

Here's the other argument. I actually made this on the, the tech build day rundown. Uh, yesterday when we were doing our recording, um, I want you to think about I-B-M-I-B-M is a tech success story, right?

Like that that is a company that has lasted forever. But one thing that I am notorious for telling people all the time, 'cause I was an intern at IBM in 2001, in, in Rochester, Minnesota land of the a 400 baby. Um, this is not Tom and Tom.

Yeah, it's full disclosure. I almost moved to Rochester, Minnesota as a kid because my dad was gonna be transferred there as an IBM engineer. Yeah.

And his state, he stayed in San Jose. But anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Yeah, either you work for IBM or you work for Mayo. That's how it works in Rochester. But I am notorious for telling people even after my time there in oh one, this is not Tom Watson's, IBM because it's not what you're seeing now.

And and even back in the day, like prior to the Red Hat acquisition, what IBM actually was, was IBM Global Services and mainframes and now it's Red Hat and mainframes and a little bit of what IBM used to do, like remember the IBM labs and everything, like all of that research that came out, yeah, those don't exist anymore. That's all been packaged up and sold off. And I think that's where VMware is right now.

We talk about the name surviving, we talk about if, to use your term, the cockroach, right? Like no matter what you do, you can't kill it. But that's not the same company that's come out the other side.

All of the things that you know and love about what VMware was aren't there anymore. Sure, the parts have been bolted back on and it kind of looks the same. But when you think about like NSX Horizon, um, like go back 10 years and look at that entire product portfolio and count the number of things that have been sold off, repackaged, killed off, I venture guess that more than 50% of it's gone now.

Because in in Broadcom's defense, they did exactly what they needed to do to make the company survive, which was cut it to the quick and only concentrate on the things that work. You know, it's the architect from the Matrix, right? There are levels of survival we are willing to accept.

And that's how they have made it as long as they have is because they're not afraid to carve the company up as finely as necessary to make it live. Right? We're also, you know, to your point, we're all watching what's going on with this tan zu platform where, um, Broadcom quietly replaced Kubernetes in that platform with Cloud Foundry and they're basically going with a, a streamlined version of Cloud Foundry.

And if you remember, that was what Pivotal was all about. It was basically a company that, you know, sold Cloud Foundry services and then that got rolled into VMware and then the question becomes, well, are they gonna sell that tan platform out and just focus on VMware? I don't know.

It'd be an interesting conversation to see what happens. I think it's a bad move if they do, to be honest with you, because that is where the value is coming right now, is running VMware management infrastructure on top of containerization. And that's why people are buying it is because they see that the writing on the wall, they're going to have to move.

I don't know how many traditional places that are still using X 86 virtualization are going to be there forever. 'cause once they shut down that last server that runs whatever that application is, what's the alternative? Oh, well it runs in the cloud.

Like you don't even need to have this on site anymore. So I think that a lot of people are gonna slowly be dragged kicking and screaming that way, and at least VMware skating where the puck is going. And I think that replacing Kubernetes with Cloud Foundry is actually a brilliant move.

Uh, if you've ever worked for a, uh, small business owner, this is, uh, oh yeah, well, I own the company, but I also own the building and I lease it back to the company and I own the delivery vans that I lease back to the company. So I'm gonna get a little bit of a revenue stream from every part of this so that I can continue to make money through the whole thing. It just so happens that I can package it up in real pretty package and sell it to you.

Mm-hmm. And, and it's interesting to your point, maybe folks will get tired of Kubernetes and they'll just go with Cloud Foundry, which is more accessible, to be honest. So we will see.

But John, I wanna ask you one last thing about this. We have been inundated by vendors who are all saying, you know, they have something that competes against VMware. And I'm kind of scratching my head a little bit going, is that really the right tact?

I mean, or maybe they should just make a case and Maybe they, they haven't, they haven't read the, the history of this company and the fact that it survives it. There's something, must be something appealing about it. 'cause people keep kept buying it or acquiring it.

And if you've got a number of companies saying they're competing against one company, it must mean that the company does a lot of things that those other companies are trying to do. I mean, that's just logic to me. All right, well folks, we're gonna leave this here, but it seems to me we'll be talking about VMware for at least another decade or more.

We'll see what happens. Hey folks, we'll be back in a minute. com is the leading resource for news analysis and education on challenges facing the cybersecurity industry.

com covers all aspects of cybersecurity, including data security, DevSecOps, cloud security, application security, network security, security threats, and more. com has the largest selection of security content featuring breaking news, blog posts, podcasts, and more. com to learn more.

com. Home of security bloggers network. Hey folks, we're back and we're returning to a topic that we talk a lot about on this show, which is software development and security.

And we're gonna revisit what happened in this. Uh, DARPA folks had a challenge and they had a bunch of companies show up, and then it looks like maybe they've, they found a way to automate some of this patching process, which is really at the root cause of many of our cybersecurity ills that bug us. But Terry, you, you looked into this, how real is any of this?

Well, okay, that always remains to be seen. I mean, it, it, it seems like this was positive, right? I mean, we're moving in a positive direction, but it also raises a whole bunch of other cyber issues as well.

So the, the winners, uh, proved that they could patch real software, you know, quickly scalably cost effectively. And, um, DARPA is putting some money behind that, uh, for them to be like, you know, opened, uh, on open source with their AI tools. And that's, that's all well and good, but it opens a bunch of cybersecurity issues, as I said before, um, because the attackers are waiting in the wings to use those same tools.

And that's another thing we've talked about quite a bit. So, So Tom, we've been afraid to patch software forever. And the, the root cause of that is that we worry that the patch is gonna be the cure that's worse than the disease and it will break the application.

And yet I have to wonder if the patch, how often does it really do that? And is the cybersecurity risk now greater than the fact that the patch might break the application? It's a trade off, right?

It's risk analysis. Do I take these systems down and patch them in the hope that I'm going to remove whatever the problem is only to make the situation worse? Look at Specter and meltdown like that is probably my, my prime example.

That's the Harvard Business Review case for this is a patch that's worse than the problem because yes, you, you could do that weird memory like, you know, basically like putting your glass to the door kind of thing. But you had to be very specifically targeted for that pipeline execution problem. And what, what's the fix?

Oh yeah, we're gonna crater the performance of your box by like 30%. Uh, but, but you're safe. And, and I think that one of the problems that we've had over the years with this idea of doing patching, at first it was, well, I don't wanna take the systems down.

Well, okay, that's, that's a non-starter right now because of cloud resilience. I, we can do this without taking the systems down. Now the problem is, oh, well what if I introduce more bugs into the system?

Welcome to coding 1 0 1 folks. Everything you do to fix a thing is gonna break something else. Now, either it'll be a good break that you'll detect right away and go, yeah, that was terrible.

Or it'll be one of those hidden things that we won't see for years. And and I, in some of the, the research that I did on this, I think it's funny that we're getting back to this old idea of, oh, well if we release the code out there, then the hackers will be able to, uh, to scan it very quickly with these tools and write exploits. And that's what I want.

I don't want them to develop this exploit and hold onto it for years and wait for the night before I go public with my company to attack me and steal all my data and all that. I want people to break it right now. I mean, I am, I hate the move fast break things mantra because it, it, it feels wrong to me, but in security, please break my things faster because the faster you break it, the faster I can fix it.

And then we don't have these problems anymore. And we've seen that a lot with, uh, platforms that are like, you know what, we're gonna release these out of band patches. But the problem is, is that you, you can't let it get out of hand.

Like in my old career, I worked a lot with, um, with Cisco phone systems, uh, the, the infamous call managers, some people are refer to it, call mangler. Um, and it was not uncommon for people to be running on a non-standard patch version, the infamous engineering specials, which were patches written by Cisco T and deliver directly to you with instructions to never upgrade this system because I don't know that this patch will ever be rolled into anything in the future. And that created its own STR problems, right?

Because now you're running on a version of code you can never actually get off of. And I think that the, the problem ultimately is engineering people will are totally fine to patch stuff. Like, like if you told me today that I needed to update my phone and do a patch to it, yes, I am on top of it, who hates patching is management.

Because management is assuming the risk that the system's gonna go down and they're gonna lose customers. But more importantly, relating to the story with darpa, if it's an automated process doing it, I can't yell at someone for doing the wrong thing. I can't yell at a script, but if you hit the button to make it go live, I can yell at you, I can punish you, I can fire you, and then I can absolve myself.

Terry is what Tom is describing maybe the root cause of why DevSecOps just hasn't quite taken on that level of deep adoption that we all thought we would see. And part of the issue, I think is in a post on that Alan wrote where he is talking about, um, it's really a people per issue. It's not really the tech.

Yeah, I found that post, uh, interesting too. And I think he's right because all of that, all of the other stuff, the automation and the whatever are supposed to be in support of the people, right? Isn't that what it, isn't that what it should be all about?

And that's the part that we've lost sight of or that DevOps has lost sight of. Uh, I mean it's complicated there, um, because things do move so quickly, I think, and, um, people, I always say this too, and I don't know how you guys, you give me a sense of how true you think it is that the development environment has changed so much. It used to be so closed, you know, everything was closed and on premise and whatever, and then you kind of opened it up.

You had a lot of people that were used to working in that closed environment. They weren't as careful as they should have been. Those are the kinds of things that I actually worry about more than the things that you sort of naturally introduce, you know, when you, when you patch or when you change code or whatever.

Um, that, that there's still this not arrogance, but this tendency to not, uh, take the security part as seriously from the jump. But I, I think that that whole bit about, you know, forgetting the people part of the con the equation is really the, i maybe the important part, I mean, is there also any, I mean, different companies try to do it, they try to patch in some way that's less disruptive and less likely to bring down the system. But I mean, I worked on a large, uh, research program a couple of years ago and that's, it's usually just not the case.

They can't get around it. I I, you know, I'm not a hundred percent sure what the, the answer is there in terms of, uh, but DevOps and, and then on the patching side of things, I just don't, I don't know. Mm-hmm.

I feel like it's a management problem to this degree where we're just incentivizing the wrong things. We're so obsessed with we gotta ship code and we think that the code is gonna drive revenue, and it's not clear to me that it actually does, but then we wind up shipping stuff with known vulnerabilities in it that everybody knows there's gonna get exploited, but we do it anyway. Well, that's the, the other thing, I mean, more recently, I mean, I would say in the last two or three months, I have read study after study where people are knowingly shipping, you know, code that's, that's corrupt, not right, you know, whatever.

And I mean, they're knowingly doing that. And I, so I guess it is in, as you know what you say, Mike, it is a management, uh, problem and it's a priority problem as well. All you've gotta do is think back to the way that we used to do stuff.

And you, and you alluded to this, you know, it used to be, it was very closed development environments. And, and I think of things like video games, right? Like some of the, the, the things that video games were notorious for we're shipped as code that was locked into a cartridge that could never be updated.

Like the idea of shipping a new version of a, of a cartridge was foreign to people. I mean, we still use the term it, the, the software's gone gold, right? And that comes from the fact that the software literally had to be pressed into a CD to be replicated, to be shipped out.

And the Gold Master was that like, like we still use the GM as the build and we don't do that today, right? Like, um, one of the biggest, uh, complaints in vi in the video game industry is that companies will ship a triple a million dollar title knowing that it's full of bugs because they know they can fix it with a patch on day one. In fact, it's, it's hilariously common now for you to have to download a patch as soon as you buy the game because oh yeah, we found a couple of bugs in the last week and we really need to fix those.

And it's that mentality of it doesn't matter what happens, it has to be out the door. Look at your, your iOS updates or your, your Windows updates or any of that other stuff. It used to be that the idea of an operating system for anything coming out every year was laughable.

I mean, there's a reason why there's no Windows 96, windows 97, windows 99, because we waited until the software was done to ship it, and now it's like, no, no, no, just push it out the door. Don't even put a version number on it anymore. Just call it Windows or Mac os or whatever.

And, and I think that the, the challenge that you're gonna run into there is that it, that runs headlong into the DevOps mentality, right? Like ship it fast, ship it out the door, get things fixed. And like you said, it's a management problem, right?

Because at the end of the day, why do I wanna keep shipping things? Because I make money when I'm shipping code. I don't care if it's secure, I don't care if it works, just get it out the door so that people won't cancel their subscription to the thing that I buy.

Yeah. Well, but then how much does that cost you in the long run too? I mean, you're, you wanna make money, right?

But you're gonna lose money if there're vulnerabilities. I don't know. I mean, but, but if systems go down, if people, you know, I, I don't know that you bleed enough customers that that, uh, costs you anything, but You wouldn't have to bleed, you wouldn't have to bleed fines that you would be levied, but the fines may not be large enough to be worried about compared to the revenue.

So what does that, are they supposed to ramp up regulatory Things now? Well, The only punishment for a criminal act is a fine, then what you're basically saying is, is that it's legal for a price. And with some of these things, if it's big enough, like if it can cause enough data leakage, I can get the government to pay me for it.

So I privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Like that's the thing. And a lot of the way that a lot of these companies work is, is, you know, the, the, the profits from selling the product go into this one bucket over here and support costs go into this bucket over here.

And I can run this bucket at a loss forever and just claim, Hey, that's the cost of doing business. And I'll find a way to balance this out in the end, but I get graded on this over here on the mythical 11% year over year profit increase and, and unlimited growth forever and ever. Amen.

And that's the problem is it's that mentality. The people that we used to work with were the kinds that were like, I'm not shipping this until it's done like that. The, the, the poster children for this were blizzard back in the day, you know, the, the creators of World of Warcraft and Diablo and all those games that everybody loves to play, it was a joke that was like, when's it gonna be?

When are you gonna ship it when it's done? Like that was the tagline every time. If it takes another year to get it out the door, great, it'll be done and we'll be happy.

When did, Hey Tom, what, when did things change and was there like an inflection point where, where that attitude just evaporated? Or was it gradual? No, it, it, there there was not a specific inflection point, but the real, the, the downhill slide started when there was more money to be made by shipping things than there was by shipping the right things, uh, private equity getting involved and get in, starting to gut companies because it's like, Hey, I need to pull as much profit outta here as I can before this whole house of cards falls down.

It's the, the massive investments that you're getting from Wall Street into these companies. I mean, I'll tell you, when Blizzard went downhill, it's when Activision bought them. It's because Activision did not share that same code mentality.

And I love the fact that you can still find people in the industry who care about it. I, I would challenge the people who are listening to this episode of Textron Gang, go to the tech field, a website and look for any presentation from the CTO of Arista Networks. Ken Doda, that man cares about code quality because he gave a, a presentation a few years ago at one of our events where he flat out said, I won't buy a company if their code quality is bad because as soon as I buy that company, that's my code and I have to fix it.

And that, that idea is foreign to some people. Yeah, I mean it's just like this Zuckerberg school of thought, it just move fast and break things. I mean it works for that, it worked for them.

I just think's Just did you imagine if we built a car like that? Hey, move fast and break things wheel fall off In the interstate's Tesla, not A problem. That's Tesla guys, we're gonna have to end this conversation 'cause we're running outta time.

But um, I would point out that, you know, I get that this is a money issue, but it's also maybe a matter of conscience and you should examine your conscience next time you ship software because well, you may be doing something that's just fundamentally wrong. All right guys. Hey, thanks everybody for being on the show today, and thank you all for spending some time with us as we went through all these various topics.

We'll be following this up with all kinds of new and interesting content from Textron tv. So please stay tuned. Until then, we'll see you next time.