Techstrong Gang – December 10, 2024

I could see having a czar of ai, I could see having a czar of crypto. Why would I want one czar for AI and crypto? You're watching Text Drug Gang.

Hello everyone. Happy Tuesday to you. It's Alan Shimmel for the Textron Gang.

We've got a great Textron gang lineup with some great stuff to talk and show you about today. Let me introduce you to today's gang members. First of all, she's back from AWS reinvent back home, it looks like in Colorado.

I could tell from that background. Uh, fu analyst Infrastructure pro, Kimberly Bates. Hey, Kimberly.

It's great to, well, it was better to see you in person, but it's great to see you here on the game. Yeah. And I just spent, uh, the weekend in Sonoma at the American Society for ai, which is a think tank.

So that was, uh, Sounds like a tough gig. It was pretty fascinating. Yeah.

Yep. No wine was there. Oh, they had a little bit there.

I, yeah, yeah. Did wine. They Managed, have some wine to scrape up a little wine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit. Good for you.

Also, joining us back from his recent escapades on the East Coast. I heard rumor has it, he was spotted in New York. Uh, our friend Steven Squid.

Steven, how are you? I am well, thank you. Uh, yes.

I was traveling through Manhattan, uh, carrying my peak design backpack and wondering why I got so much police attention last week. True fact. Um, however, uh, no, I was there, uh, for vacation and it was a lot of fun.

Uh, great food, great entertainment, love New York. You didn't take a bus in, did you? Alas, no, actually, even worse.

I drove. Uh, really? I do not drive in Manhattan.

No, they, well, they discourage, they try to discourage you. All right. But it's great to have you here, Steven.

Then, um, also remote today, but we're happy to have her. She's pretty in pink. It's our own trace.

Ba and, Hey Trace, how are you? I am doing very well. I'm glad to see everybody today.

It seems like it's been a bit, It has been a, mm-hmm. It has been more than a bit. I'm glad you're here, though.

Any travels for you recently? No. I am so happy that I've been at home for two whole weeks and I've got at least two more weeks at home.

So the novelty of four continuous weeks, I, I dunno what to do with myself. Woo. I hope your marriage will survive.

We Shall see, I say the, the same thing when I'm home that long too, but I'm, I'm actually home till the end of the year too, so. Fantastic. Okay.

Then joining us. Also remote, but he's back home in, in, uh, it's not really upstate New York still, but it's not, it's not New York City. It's, it's just Above New Rochelle where, you know, the pet Dick Van D**e.

Is it Dick Van D**e in New Rochelle? The and Mary Tyler Moore, or is that a little too old? That, that may be a little too old for some folks, but Yeah, they, they watch some of those old time television shows during the day now.

Right. Ludo tv. TV baby.

Yeah. It's our chief contact officer of Mike Ard. Yep.

Continuing the, uh, marriage theme. Uh, went to Sierra Town over the weekend and as part of a celebration of my anniversary, so that was fun. And we had lovely time.

Well, happy anniversary to you guys, Mike. Thank you. Very cool.

Very cool. Joining me here in studio, she is our sustainability, all things green editor and analyst, Bonnie Schneider. Hey, Bonnie, how are you?

I'm doing great. Great to be Here. And have you been on the road really lately?

Uh, I know he wants to Austin, but, oh, yes. No. Maybe, uh, 2025.

We'll see. 2025 to shame. It'll be here before we know it.

Right? Crazy. Alright.

So gang members, welcome. You know it. Let's face this, the middle of December.

Hard news. It's a little, maybe on a slower news day. We, we, Mike has gotten some great, uh, topics for us.

We're head, head up with, uh, uh, David Sachs has been named as the, uh, and I guess this wouldn't need congressional approval. So he's in, David Sachs is the White House AI and Crypto Czar as reported by Bloomberg and other sources. Mike, what's up here?

Yeah. Uh, apparently he's going to chair the Science and Technology Council in the White House, which, uh, I guess the Trump is now referring to as the AI and Crypto Czar, and he's part of that PayPal mafia out there where it's all these venture capitalists who pull their resources, includes, uh, Elon, and of course JD Vance, and, uh, some of the other well-known Thi Dave. Yep.

Mr. Thiel. And it feels a little bit on the top end of it, maybe, you know, payback for, you know, all the funding for the election.

Who knows? But I gotta ask the question up front. I mean, I think it's a good thing to have somebody sitting on these things who actually knows something about technology.

I just wish it wasn't somebody who maybe has a vested interest in the outcome. But what's your thought? You're not really gonna ask me that, are you?

It, It's starts with an o and ends with an OAY. Uh, I know how you feel about that, but ultimately, I would devil's advocate here. I mean, it feels like to me, we need somebody to sort this stuff out because nobody seems to have a real consensus opinion about AI or crypto, and they're not going away.

So what should we do? Well, having a champion, I'm, I'm not gonna speak to the champion, but having a champion, we, we need that. Right?

We've not had a strong voice coming out of the government space. We've had all kinds of amazing consortiums that have been brought together. What is it?

The, the AI safety organization. So they're large and lumbering and have not yet made the kind of well statements and guidance haven't put forward some ideas. So I, I don't think it's a bad thing to have somebody as that, that technology champion.

Now, should it be the same for AI and crypto? Well, that's an interesting question. And is this the right choice?

I'm not even gonna speak to that, but I do like having somebody who has experience as opposed to somebody without experience. So there you go. That's as far as I'll go to bait everybody else to join me on this.

What do you think, guys? So the first thing I would ask this group here is, do we think that AI is gonna fundamentally change our world? Absolutely.

Yes, it already has. And with the no nods going on, there needs to be some level of both government and, and I'm, lord knows, I'm not a government kind of federalist, kind of per, you know, federal kind government kind of person. I'm a local person, but there needs to be that kind of leadership, and that is both for, um, the big investments that need to be done on the things that are going on geopolitically in terms of the investments and our investments as a country.

And then the other piece of it that you touched on, which is some of the security, probably the regulations, whatever that is. I just came back from three days of this think tank American society for ai. I mean, I, I swear I am the dumbest person in that room Sometimes.

That's a good thing though, Right? I, I'm sitting over in the corner, listen, I am just at awe with the people that are there. And this is, comes from all walks of life.

We have government, I've, there was a Lieutenant General there that headed up, um, AI for DOD. There were people, there was also another group, you know, there was 50 of us there, there were several people from the, um, the armed forces. We had one of the leading spokespeople on macro macroeconomics, uh, formerly of Oxford, now heading up a, a think tank on macroeconomics.

Ran a game with us that was, you know, a three hour game on political AI and investment. And it was absolutely eye-opening to look at saying, what is China doing? What are we doing?

Where are we going? And if anything it says is that, yes, we do believe this is gonna be massively changing in our world, therefore, and it's going to affect everybody's life. Everybody from the trucker to the assembly worker, to the person working at McDonald's and to the coders.

And it's gonna affect our lives in terms of labor. It's gonna infect our lives in terms of money. And with all of that, yes, there needs to be a bigger, broader view of it.

And my opinion on our Congress people, they don't have enough knowledge understanding what's real and what's not real, and that needs to come to the forefront. So I think this is as big to me naming him there is as big as us looking at what the CHIPS Act was doing in terms of bringing that investment back into the United States and putting the manufacturing on premise, um, into there. So that's kind of my big picture coming out of, you know, where I, where I've been for the last three days.

The interesting speculation is that this fellow's gonna distinguish between use cases and the AI models, and that he's not gonna push for regulation on the models themselves as much as it would be narrow use cases for particular applications that might have that profound impact you were talking about. Which is kind of what happened in the state of California when they tried to put that regulation through. And, you know, the state was gonna theoretically review all the AI models and the governor said, we don't have the resources or the expertise to do that anyway.

So he basically said, no, I think that's the way to go. Um, but you know, to your point, who's gonna, you know, keep an eye on what is happening with those AI models because, you know, those are kind of the core use cases and people can use them for good and for Ill Actually, and that's a really good, one of the things that we do in that group is we have a debate and there's about three or four topics that we have this five minute debates argument back and forth. And I had the privilege of debating on open source and, um, took taking the side of the open source why we should have open source l lms.

And then we had the other side of it, and we didn't really talk about the models as much as we talked about the LLMs and the impact of the LLMs and what they needed and why we would need to be able to peer into those LLMs, why we need to be able to see in there why, you know, where those pieces are and should they be open source or not. If I'm developing a genomic LLM, you know, do we want that to be open source because of what it could happen to? So I think these are really, really tough, tough questions that we as a society need to have strong, open debate on.

And that's what I'm hoping is going to happen with this, because I think out of the other side of it is where we come out and with some really good answers. So I I, I've got some thoughts here. I'm surprised we're missing the elephant for the trees.

Okay. There is a big fat elephant here. Is AI gonna change our lives?

Absolutely. Do we need a federal government, not mandate, but direction that helps set a strategic course for the United States to pursue AI superiority and supremacy in the world, much like a Manhattan project or, or space race or what have you? Absolutely.

Absolutely. When John F. Kennedy said, we're gonna go to the moon, not because it's easy, because it's hard, and he set up a leader of the nasa, the space program.

Did he also say, oh, and by the way, this guy's also in charge of the treasury. Oh, and by the way, he's from my cronies who, who paid money to get in here and already have an agenda. Oh, and by the way, did John F.

Kennedy own a business in the crypto space that he didn't give up and has a, therefore a vested conflict of interest? Have we all lost our minds and we're all smoking this s**t that we think that this is, that the way the government's supposed to work, yes, appoint in Ai z get, get the best and brightest to lead our AI efforts in America. We need to own ai.

He's not the ai cryptos are, and he's not from the oligarchy, and the president shouldn't be having an interest in a cryptocurrency business while this is going on. That's the problem. That's the elephant.

And if you guys don't wanna see the elephant for what it is, the elephant's gonna wait, do do on your head. That's my thoughts. So do you think do, so do you think crypto is a legitimate currency or is it a giant Ponzi scheme?

At the end of the day, what I think really doesn't matter, there are people making fortunes of money on crypto. Um, you know, it's a hundred thousand dollars or whatever is Bitcoin now, right? So, you know, is there a reason for the government to get involved in crypto again?

A hundred percent. I think we saw this with the prosecutions over the last couple years of, you know, when there's that much money involved, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Right?

And so yes, we need that. I would think that's more of kind of function than it is my National Science Foundation. I don't understand, unless it's strictly a blockchain that he's looking into, and not crypto.

But why I, I think the fact that they've linked AI and crypto to one person who happens to be from the PayPal mafia, you want to, how many more breadcrumbs do you need till, till you wind up in the witch's oven like Hansel and Gretel? Fair enough. I had not looked at it that closely as in terms terms of the background on it.

I was hopefully hoping that the person that does head up on the AI side, and I don't have much to say on the crypto side because I haven't tracked it at all, zero. Um, is the, is having somebody from the tech industry cutting that? Absolutely not at Terribly.

I agree with you. We need, And I'm not sure who you would have head that up, and maybe he's not the right, quite the right person because of all the reasons Why He might be, and if that's all he is doing, good for it. I mean, but Let's, let's, let's track it back to some fundamentals that I think we all agree on.

There needs to be an AI leader, I'm gonna call it a champion. I don't like the term czar. Um, there needs to be somebody who is looking at crypto, both from the technical perspective and the socioeconomic perspective.

So we need to have that crypto champion. There is a technology bend to it. Should they be the same or not?

My my own personal belief that not representing anybody else is that they should be, uh, differentiated. Um, so what's the other thing that, that we've agreed to so far that champion needs to be, uh, associated to the federal government, but not from, uh, an academic setting? Only because we need to make sure that there's a real tie in to the tech industry because that's where the money is right now.

That's where the money and investment is going. The research that we're doing privately, the research that we're doing under academic institutions pales in comparison to what we see in the big tech. So we need to have somebody who has insight into that.

So we need somebody tied to tech, dunno if this is the right guy or not, but maybe having, uh, a, a champion over two things tied together is too closely aligned, right? To, to tie into Alan's passion. That seems a little bit too close.

Um, but let's, you know, I I also agree that we need to have that champion. We need somebody that has a voice out there. Because one of the most worst things that's been happening over the last year is we're spinning up organization after organization think tank after think tank.

And we're not making a lot of forward progress. We are nasal ging, you know, we are looking down our belly buttons, wonder what's wondering, what's going on. And we're not, you know, we've said it.

I think Alan might have been the person that I heard this from the first time years ago. What is it that the, um, um, US innovates, uh, China, uh, uh, I'm sorry, Europe, Europe regulates and, and China replicates. Well, this is one of those times where Europe is ahead of us with regulation and we need to catch up with them, even if we're not regulating in the same way.

We're not investing heavily enough in that because we are the innovation drivers. But this is a slippery slope. This, this innovation is slippery.

This is very slippery, But the regulation in Europe has closed down some of the investments going on. Oh, absolutely needs to. So the overall feeling is the needs to step back.

And, you know, this gets back to the, we did have a person from the, um, high up in California, I can't name names because of the rules mm-hmm. Can talk about myself and what I heard, but I can't name names. But we had somebody very, very high up, uh, in the, uh, executive branch of California talking about, um, the AI investments, what they're doing in there and, and why they, you know, why they did vetoed that law.

And, um, where they are with that and their position on why that needed to be veto. So what they're hopefully preferring to see coming out of the, and then there was a lot of commentary about how they were looking at the, the government, European government on there and what that had done to the, the, the investments that were over there. I, I don't know if hyper regulation right now is the way to go for ai.

I think we just have to ensure that it's not quickly monopolized by the usual tech monopolies, But that's gonna take policy and regulation. Yeah. Alan, we, we, so I don't necessarily think that we should follow what the EU is doing.

My kudos to EU is that they're act they're actually moving on. And that's what they do, right or wrong. They, they, they regulate and, and Well, they get, they get out there and have the conversation faster than we're having the conversation.

And that's, that's okay. But we do innovate faster than them. Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. So, but we need, but this is that time where we need to a little bit of balance. Look, this is akin to the space race.

Oh, absolutely. And, and to that point, let me jump in here, Alan, to that point, what we need is leadership and, and what Tracy said earlier in this conversation is, is dead on. Unfortunately, that means that we need understanding, um, as well, we need to have somebody who understands the technology and somebody who's willing to lead on the technology.

I'd like to point out that the Biden administration came out with a, an executive order that was very procr in 2022. Um, that order was certainly not written by Joe Biden, who probably can't spell crypto. Um, and, and there was no, there was nothing more there, there was really no leadership at all in the Biden administration with regard to pushing that forward.

Like I said, it was surprisingly procr and crypto, you know, Bitcoin rallied and crypto was, was hot again. But, um, but then nothing. And the same with ai.

Uh, the Biden administration put Anita Dunn in charge of the ai. I mean, if you guys remember this, a big AI get together that they had. Anita Dunn is a communications director.

She's not a leader, and she's also not a technologist. Um, I have nothing against her. She's probably a wonderful human being, but I don't know how she was supposed to, uh, gather these people together on AI and come up with an AI plan that would then have any kind of action behind it.

And it certainly didn't. So, so far we've seen absolutely zero leadership from Washington on this. I guess that's a way of not regulating it, but it's also a way of not leading it.

And no matter who's, you know, no matter who's in charge, no matter what your position is on crypto, on ai, on the mix of crypto and ai, I think that we can all agree that we need somebody who has a good understanding of these tech, of these technologies and the implications and the social factors that affect these, that's willing to listen to people to consider various viewpoints. And that's then able to lead on this in Washington and get something done. Because so far, essentially what we're doing is nothing, and we're wasting a lot of time and energy.

Is, is Sachs the right guy for that? I doubt it, but, um, you know, at least he has an understanding of it. But it does also, I would also point out that he has been much more crypto focused than AI focused.

I think it's very likely that Sachs is going to be, the crypto are parentheses ai and that is not leadership. And that's not what we need, Ron. Yeah, I was just gonna say that, um, part of whoever, you know, is in charge and what their mission is, that has to be, and I was looking into this, if David Sachs has talk about this is the energy use that AI is, um, causing, and I didn't find that much about that.

Um, and I'd like to see that as a bigger part of the conversation in terms of, um, addressing AI and, and crypto, um, and, uh, data centers. I see a lot of people talking about that we need to lean into renewable energy. But I'd like to see more of that in the conversation.

Let me just play devil's advocate here for a moment. Hear me out. There are certain times in our history where we have made it a national directive to do something, the space race, the Manhattan Project, uh, you know, things of that nature.

But for the most part, the United States is who the United States is because of the magical wonder of the market at work. And sometimes it's okay to take a laissez-faire attitude and say, let's let the market sort this out. And it it has, it has, it has worked for us.

Right? The internet, though it was government funded and doper and all that stuff, really, the commercial internet became what it is without a heck of a lot of, we didn't have an internet czar. What?

We didn't even have a lot of internet regulation. It was very much the Wild, wild West. But we did have Al Gore.

Well, yes, He invented it. Thank You. Yes, we did have Al Gore and thank Yes.

Hello Al Gore, wherever you are. Sorry I had to do it. No, no, it's okay.

It's okay. But, but there's something to be said for letting, letting this thing percolate. Right.

And don't, don't kneecap it. Right. Let the American innovation engine run wild and let the market determine where you are.

If it were not such a powerful tool, then I might agree with you. If it were not such a powerful force, I would be more likely to agree with you. But let's let nuclear go unregulated because, you know, it's something that can be really good.

Just let the market regulate it. My my point there is That didn't do that. That's how female island got its license.

Kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

My my point on that is, it is that profound that I don't think we can simply, and the money associated to it is that profound that we can't simply wait for the markets because the markets are doing what the markets want to do right now. And they're not necessarily, well, I won't say necessarily. I don't see all the evidences that we're looking at, the social implications that we're looking at the sustainability.

I mean, to the point that was made earlier, when I Google something now, I don't, I'm not asking for an AI search yet. An AI search is, has now been added. Every time you do something simple that's overkill.

Is that a bottle of water every time? Right? They're opening up TMI, you know, this right?

TMI is being reopened because an agreement was signed with Microsoft because they, there's an, is it Google who's building Right? Investing in building a nuclear power plant? I Think they got shot down on that one, but, okay.

I don't know. I Don't know. But look, hey, you know what?

And there's a more there, you know where I'm lot there. I, I usually, I'm, I'm a little bit on one side, but I'm all for more nuclear. I, I think short term, I'd rather us build next gen nuclear plants than keep fracking and getting earthquakes in places like Ohio.

I'm a Pennsylvania anti fracker, so, well, not anti fracker Before this conversation goes completely off the rails. I'm gonna close, went off the Rail a little time, time ago. I'm gonna Say one thing.

You know, I have noticed that there is a large number of people in from Florida in the cabinet. So I'm gonna nominate Alan Shimmel to join the technology council. I would, I would have to respectfully decline my work here is too strategic.

That would be great. And if it meant I couldn't do text drawing gang every day. No, not happening.

You guys are here. They don't have from Boca Raton. Yeah.

Just Wanna make sure that I They do not, they need a Boca Raton person in there. Hey Mike. I just wanna make sure I was clear on something.

I'm not against the concepts of fracking. I live in Pennsylvania where there's a lot of fracking and I've seen the negatives of what has happened with how it has been, uh, uh, executed. So I, uh, I'm a science geek, but, uh, yeah, I just wanna make sure that I was, I was clear on my own personal No, I get view Around that, so I get it.

All right. Hey, we went wade long on this need to, uh, move along. We're gonna take a break here on Text Strong, on check text, strong gang, excuse me.

And we're gonna come back and Bonnie says, smokey, the bear likes ai. It would make him czar. You're watching Tech Drunk Gang, Modernize your business to fuel innovation and elevate customer experiences with the builder community.

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Hi everyone. Welcome back to Techstrong Gang. In the last section, we were talking about European regulations.

And this, uh, story coming up has to do with that as well with a news update. So in Europe, there's a lot of regulations happening around sustainability and sustainability in tech, but in sustainability, specifically regarding deforestation. And deforestation is destruction of global forest, um, with supply chain activities like logging, uh, transferring really depleting natural resources.

And the latest statistics show that deforestation could lead to up to 30%, um, in carbon emissions. So it's an important area that that needs to be, uh, monitored. So the European Commission has put in regulations that will make companies report how exactly how their supply chain, everything they do affects deforestation.

But as of just late last week, they updated the deadlines for these new regulations. So small and medium companies will have till 2026 to do this reporting. But larger enterprises, the deadlines exactly one year from now, December, uh, 2025.

So let's take a closer look at how advanced technologies like AI and satellite monitoring are helping corporations monitor their forest use. Hi everyone, I'm Bonnie Schneider with your Ecotech Analyst Insights. How do you track millions of trees across the globe through artificial intelligence and satellite technology?

Safeguarding woodlands is a key focus of the eus deforestation regulations. These rules will require companies to show that their products are not linked to habitat destruction. The scope is massive affecting everything from cocoa to cattle.

Geolocation data and complete supply chain documentation will be mandated for commodities like palm oil, soy, rubber, and wood products. So how can advanced technology help through real-time monitoring of areas that were once difficult to track? AI powered satellites provide detailed insights into forests, while machine learning algorithms detect subtle changes in tree cover, given the challenges of compliance to meet the requirements.

Meanwhile, larger corporations are racing to implement monitoring systems to maintain their access to the EU market. The integration of satellite monitoring and machine learning is not only helping organizations meet regulatory requirements, it's also redefining how global supply chains manage natural resources. If you think you're seeing a pattern here of European regulations being issued, and then just within weeks of the deadline, an extension is pushed through due to pushback, you're right.

That's what we've seen in a lot of these regulations and this new deforestation. Uh, one is an example of that, but I think the overall, uh, point is that these regulations are coming, even if they are delayed. And being aware of how we use implements on the supply chain is something that companies are gonna have to monitor.

I I, I happen to think this is the way the EU does things. They did it. This is the same pattern for GDPR.

It's the same patent for Dora, uh, and, and for their AI initiatives as well. Mm-hmm. What they do is, and you gotta give them credit, they recognize that something needs to be done.

They plant a flag in the ground, a stake and say, this is our view. This is how we think it should be regulated. They delay those regulations initially at least a year.

And then as you get closer, they'll, they'll delay them again to further fine tune it. But, but what they've said is, we are going to have regulation here. It may not be perfect today, but we'll get there.

And, you know, with GDPR, I mean, for all the doomsdayers out there, it, it seems to have worked pretty well. We'll see how Dora and and AI work as a, as well as this. Um, again, I give 'em credit for moving it.

I, I'll tell you something, I, this is something I follow closely is deforestation and greenhouse gas and all of that. I was looking, Steven, I don't know, maybe if you've seen this, there's a couple of programs out there that allows a corporate, a corporation like Tech Trunk to in essence Cedar Forest, right? It's our forest.

Mm-hmm. And it winds up costing about a dollar or a dollar 50 a tree to plant trees there. And, you know, you get your plaque, but more than a plaque, you actually get an app and you could monitor the health of your forest, and you could name trees for individual customers, employees and stuff.

Like they gamified it. And I think for a buck and a half a tree, the thing is you do have to buy a minimum of a thousand trees. Mm-hmm.

So it's about $1,500. It's $1,500 well spent in my mind. Yeah.

And, um, I was thinking about doing it and for the holiday season, sending our customers that we planted a tree on their behalf in the tech strong Forest. That's great. You know, and we've had some of those companies on Ecotech Insights that do it globally, and it's a growing movement.

Yeah. I mean, to the eus credit, they're also encouraging member states to plant major forests. I know in Ireland, the farmers get paid to give up farming and plant trees, and the EU helps fund that.

This sounds so nice, doesn't it? I am, I'm not a pessimist, I'm an optimist. Uh, but no, I'm sorry.

I love this. I love the idea of planting trees. We looked into that with tech field day.

We looked into, um, carbon credits. We looked into planting trees. I, I hate to say it, but when you actually dug underneath the, the curtain, most of those programs were complete bs.

You know, I I, I love the idea of having these things. I love that they exist, but I fear that maybe they might not have the intended result, or at least maybe they might not live up to their lofty promises. I, I wish that they did, but I suspect being a bit of a realist, that much of these promises would be only achieved at a much greater investment financially than most people would be willing to give.

And therefore, I worry that maybe they're not actually real. So, um, But there's an app Me free, But there's an app that Goes cricket and it's tactic can monitor it. I was gonna say that, you know, perhaps a pivot on this, because this is Textron gang is talking a little bit about the technology that supports this.

I mean, it is, it is fantastic and phenomenal. I had the opportunity, I think this was 2014, to start working with drones and with a form of ai, not all of what we have now. And what we were doing was we were doing geospatial change detection.

So imagine that I fly over a fracking pond and I ha I know exactly what the depth should be. I can see that the fence is there. I then fly over another time because I have predetermined flight paths and I can see that something has changed, right?

I can see that the water is now gone, or the fence is now gone. There's dramatic amounts of capabilities when you're talking about using the automations, when you're talking about, and this is not even using satellite, this is using lidar. This is using more geo geolocated technologies, but it's fantastic.

I'd like to talk pivot just a little bit in here, just a little bit more. What's the most exciting technology on the horizon for us to use in this kind of a way? Yeah, I was, when I saw an article, go ahead Mike.

Everybody's talking about carbon capture, but I'm not sure that works either. But, you know, theoretically we're gonna, you know, capture all this carbon and shove it in a mountain or run to the ocean somewhere Hmm hmm. Stuff that's going on out in the Midwest.

So when I read that article, the first thing I kind of like popped in my brain was, uh, wildfires and try to look at how we're using, potentially using AI for wildfires. And we've been using modeling for quite some time on wild, especially the big, big fires that we have out west, and modeling their direction, what they're doing, et cetera. Although I think that the feet on the street and the guys that have been doing this for so long, and the fighting fires probably know as well as any model will do because of the, the knowledge base that they have.

But that modeling potentially can save lives in terms of how we fight the fires and what the directions the winds are going and where things, and how we put the planes up, et cetera, to go and, and drop the chemicals on in those areas to control some of the fires. So that's one of the areas I think is extremely exciting about you, what we're doing within the forest management piece of it. Um, the other thing I ask the question about is one of the reasons why we do have fires, um, the dense is there are density of our, our, our forests have increased massively because we haven't logged, um, as much as we used to, um, in those areas.

And so I'm kind of wondering, okay, so we're planting trees, but yet we have this density problem in some of the areas I'm not a We need, we need a forest station czar. Just We do. We need a Forza.

I I nominate smokey. There you go. There you go.

Well, you Know, a tangent to all of this. He was a great, he was a big contributor to the campaign this year. Smokey Bear.

Yeah. Yeah. That should qualify him.

What are we talking about? Yeah, we're Maybe tangent. You know, the, I think I, I think we should nominate Yogi.

He'd be, do a better Job. Oh my goodness. Well, you know, well, he is Something, something To consider.

Wait, Go ahead. Go's the, he's smarter than the average bear. He's also really Good at stealing from picnic Baskets, which would Fit in.

Yeah. We gotta take a break and come to our next 'cause we'll never finish today. What a crazy Tuesday.

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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. So, thanks, uh, very much for giving me a chance to come on here and talk a little bit about our Networking Field Day event, which was a few weeks ago.

Now, uh, as you know, with the tech field day crew, we do field day events in different topics. And, uh, yeah, we recently did networking Field Day. This is, uh, probably our biggest, best brightest subject area.

It's simply because there's a lot of companies that are doing a lot of really cool, innovative things in the space. And I thought I would share it with the Textron community a little bit. Um, basically because overall, um, one of the things I like to say about field Day is we don't actually have a topic apart from, you know, networking, which is a pretty big topic, but there's always a topic that emerges from the directions the companies are going, the conversations they're having, what they're saying.

Now, going into networking field day, I would've guessed that the topic was gonna be AI because it's 2024. However, it turned out that there was a lot more nuance in that discussion. Yeah, there's a lot of AI in there.

But the major trends that we heard, uh, number one was the, as a service of everything. This is a huge trend in networking now where companies are basically challenging the idea that, um, end users would even buy equipment anymore, even data center equipment, and would instead subscribe to an as a service model to have that networking equipment brought in, deployed and used a sort of the, um, natural evolution of some of the opex transformation that we've seen in the data center, uh, up until now. Another, uh, key trend was, uh, network automation around operations, uh, around management, around scalability and so on.

There again, there's an AI angle to that, but it really is focused on addressing sort of the key needs in networking. And frankly, one of those needs in networking is, is it pros. I'm sure that many of the folks listening to Textron Gang have some experience in networking while, um, networking needs you.

Uh, it's very hard for companies to find people who really have deep networking experience, the ability to configure and manage and maintain these things, the ability to operate them long term. And over time, that's become even more difficult as people are increasingly pivoting to other fields. So, uh, there were a, a bunch of different companies presenting, I want to call out a few of them.

Um, two of the companies that got a lot of attention were a company called Nile and a company called Meter. These were the guys that are upsetting the Apple cart with regard to, uh, buying and using networking equipment. Essentially, they're in there disrupting the whole thing and saying, what if you didn't buy it?

What if we managed it for you? What if we deployed it for you? What if it was sort of a service that we're providing for you?

Um, in terms of automation, uh, we heard from Arista, again, which is a company we've been following a long time, talking about how they're doing observability and zero trust, security and, and management. Uh, we talk, we heard from my potential who's, uh, talking about operationalizing and, and orchestrating network automation, uh, path solutions, uh, you know, talking about network visibility and automated troubleshooting. But of course, you know, again, at 2024, so, so we we're hearing about AI as well.

Um, elicit has a, a cloud native microsegmentation platform. They're doing zero trust, they're doing security, they're doing automation or, and policy. A v networks has a AI networking stack, um, as well with, um, realtime insights, uh, to how the network is performing, um, and also leveraging AI and, and, and allowing companies to leverage ai.

So overall, it was a really interesting event. Uh, I am not a networking nerd. That title belongs to Tom Hollingsworth, but I will say that, uh, it shows the direction that the networking industry is heading shows the direction the overall IT industry is heading.

And actually, ly I'd love to kind of throw this ball to you because you know, you know more about data infrastructure and infrastructure generally, and the direction that the industry is heading. Is this a surprise to you that the networking industry would be heading toward as a service, as a model? Yes, and I'll say that because I just finished going through some, looking at a few items.

Um, I had, uh, some folks asking us about where STAs was storage as a service. And, um, and I'll, I'll, I'll counter that a little bit as well. But, and so I started digging into saying, okay, so how much is actually this getting traction and where is it at?

Um, and I put out a bunch of feelers into my market. I looked at the data. It's really hard when you look at the financials coming out of the companies about what, when they talk about a RR, not all of it is managed service.

A lot of that is just subscription kind of stuff that's in the ar. So you gotta parse that out to figure out how much of this is actually storage as a service, how much of this is subscription along with the hardware that goes along with it. And overall, there's a slowdown.

And that slowdown in that purchasing of storage as a service is partially because people are, has spent a lot of their money on the AI items, et cetera. Um, and maybe they, they're, I mean, somebody was saying yes, they're, they're spending all this opex over there on, um, the AI piece of it or whatever they're doing, so they don't have the money. So, so they're using their CapEx to purchase instead.

Some of it is that they're doing the analysis of it and saying, at the end of the day, it's cheaper to buy the storage because on the storage items differently than networks. So this may be different, is that often what I'll buy is I'll buy, you know, buy new and then my older stuff goes on to do some, you know, it's kind of like the used car goes to the kid, right? So I, I give my used card and my teenager to use.

So that's where we've seen that. On the flip side of that, we believe that the other items, like these full stacks that are going in for AI are probably going in with some level of an as a service capability or support system. So it may be just that we're seeing this slow down on the storage side of the house, and, and this is actually varying by, by vendor that we're talking to.

Um, but yes, this is, it's kind of, it was an interesting, I mean, I just dug into this this last November. This is like, you know, current news about, um, you know, folks that I was talking to. So, yeah, and it could be different with networking because I don't think you deprecate your old networking gear someplace else.

I think you really change it up and you keep it for about seven years and then you change it over. So probably from an opex standpoint, it makes a whole lot of sense. I feel like the cloud service providers are actually driving the most innovation in the networking space these days.

And that's because they have the use case that drives it. And AI has gotten them to double down. 'cause there's just a massive amount of data that they're dealing with.

And if you look at what AWS was talking about and reinvent, they're doing everything from, you know, building their own processes to, you know, creating new cables, connections for the fiber optic transceivers that they're using just to optimize traffic flow. And it matters to them greatly. So they're like, you know, same thing that they're telling Intel, they're telling Cisco, they're like, we'll do it without you.

So shameless plug, you know, we do a show on techstrong TV in, uh, sponsored by our friends at CloudFlare called the Connectivity cloud. And, and that's really what it's about. It's about networking in a world where we have that hyperscale cloud center where we have assets on the edge where so much lives on our end points, and how do we connect all of those in, in tomorrow's network?

And, um, and how does that all work? And it, it's a, that we have some great guests on that show. It's a fascinating, uh, show.

We every other week, we, we, we, we do want. Um, but it, it, it, you know, it makes for great tech field days and it was, it was a great tech field day. I should also mention another Shameless Plug Tech Field Day is available on TechOne tv.

We, when they're live, we stream 'em on TechOne tv. But if you want to go back and watch this Tech Field Day, Steven, are they on Tech Strum TV and they're on YouTube as well? Yeah, all the presentations are on YouTube for the last 15 years.

In fact, there's a lot of backlog there. So you could actually see one of the very first ever presentations from Arista, for example, um, way back when, over a decade ago. But yeah, all these, uh, presentations that we talked about there are available, uh, on YouTube as well and on Textron tv.

Um, I, I do feel like, uh, you know, to Kimberly's point, I wonder if maybe one of the changes that we're seeing in terms of the opex, uh, shift is just allocation of capital. Maybe companies, because they're putting so much resource into buying AI hardware, buying new data center, um, that they just have less, uh, capital to spend on, you know, CapEx in other areas. And, and I wonder too, if this sort of Cloudification overall is leading them to just sort of a different perspective, a different kind of mental paradigm when it comes to deploying and managing systems, um, may, you know, 'cause I, I would've guessed that the storage, uh, as a service would've taken off much, much greater than that.

But, uh, you certainly have more visibility into that. So it just hasn't taken off. It just, it's taken, it took off.

I mean, it did take off and there's definitely a percentage of it that's out there. That's as a service. You know, clearly you've got all the cloud stuff that cloud that's going on there, but there just seem to be the slowdown.

And I do believe, I mean, it's different products are purchased in different ways. And I, you know, as I said, I don't really know the networking industry. I don't know the technology very well.

I don't know their cycles of, of, um, upgrades. Um, I know they're different than the servers that's different than the storage. And it's, you know, there are three different, you know, series there.

Um, seven years is networking, three years is tends to be servers and five years tends to be storage. Um, so that kind of changes things. I would also think that, you know, HVE started their world of GreenLake and as a service on the networking side.

And they had a phenomenal success with that. Um, phenomenal. And so even the guy that was running that networking piece came over to run the storage side.

We didn't see the same on the success on the storage side. So I think there's something unique about your networking piece that is driving this that's different than the other technologies. Interesting.

Guys, I gotta pull the plug only 'cause I have to run over to the next studio here and do my next event here with the CD Foundation. Nice CD pipeline. Um, but Kimberly Chase, Steven, Mike and Bonnie.

Hello. Thanks for joining us. I hope you, you all have enjoyed our Textron gang gang too.

As usual, we'd have a full day of Textron TV following this. So stay tuned here, stay on point, and uh, we'll see you tomorrow on Wednesday. For Textron Gang, this is Alan Shiel.

We're out.