Techstrong Gang – December 3, 2024

Hey everyone. I'm in Vegas for AWS reinvent, and you are not. You're watching Textron Gang.

Hello everyone. It's Alan Shimmel of Techstrong coming at you live from the Win Hotel, our tech strong studio headquarters for this week. As we celebrate AWS reinvent, we'll be bringing you lots of AWS reinvent, uh, related news and stories and interviews all week.

We have a full lineup. You can check it out on Techstrong tv, but we're also gonna be doing the Gang from Vegas all week, although not all of our gang members are in Vegas. Let me, and, but some are.

Let me introduce you to today's gang lineup. First of all, he doesn't leave Silicon Valley for anything it seems. He's our resident Silicon Valley expert editor, John Schwartz.

Hey John, how are you? Hey, How's it going? Hey, actually, I did go to a, uh, field day at Steven.

I, I met Tom, your, your, um, compatriot a couple weeks ago. Well, may I ask where that field day was? It was in San Jose.

It was in downtown San Jose. Oh, I rest my case. No further questions.

Well, Silicon Valley though, so you're right, I'm wrong. I'm sorry. Alright, Carry on.

But, uh, anyway, John, it's always pleasure having you on. Thank you. Joining us holding down the fort in our Boca Ratone Nerve Center Studio headquarters.

It's our sustainability analyst and editor o Bonnie Schneider. Hi, Bonnie. How are you?

Hi, Alan. Great to be here. Great to have you on.

And, uh, not coming to Tech Field Day, staying back for some lake effect snow. Uh, I, I don't know if you guys got it there, Stephen, but Buffalo looked bad yesterday. Uh, he's the founder's CEO of Buffalo Tech Field Day.

Buffalo looked really good yesterday versus the Oklahoma Shield. Come on. That, that was beautiful.

Okay. Okay. Well, I, I guess if you liked, uh, if you, if you liked the Vil or you don't like who they were playing, right.

The Baltimore or not, they weren't playing. Oh, Oh, the 49 ERs unfor, The 49 ERs. Yes.

The San Francisco. Yeah. They got destroyed nighters.

They, yeah, the 49 ERs are in a tailspin. But let's go back to Lake Effect, Cleveland Tech Field Day, CEO, futur Group, Steven Foskett. Hey, Steven.

Welcome. It's good to be here. And, uh, thankfully my town is just below the snow belt.

Uh, so we got nothing at all. We just got like, pretty little flakes coming down, but, uh, yeah, just a few miles north of here. It is a blizzard.

Wow. Well, I'm glad you're okay and you missed out on that. And, you know, I could tell from our group that we're easily distracted here going down alternate storylines.

I'll try to keep us on, on track, but, you know, the, uh, besides me being in Vegas, our other gang member coming outta some Vegas, I didn't realize she's actually in the same hotel. URA medal analyst, Kimberly Bates. There she is.

Hey, Kimberly. How are you? Good morning.

Good morning to you all. So, guys, you know what, they slipped us a curve ball here. We came out here thinking we're gonna cover AWS and kind of all hell's breaking loose, uh, Intel's CEO, God.

John, what's the story? Well, so Pat Gelsinger, who has been at Intel on and off for 40 years, he actually started as a teenager there in 1979. He was their first CTO and he became the CEO about four years ago.

He retired on Sunday. The company made the announcement on Monday, and this kind of ended a, this tumultuous nearly four year period for the company in which it was really struggling against Nvidia. Qualcomm, a MD.

Um, it just recently got, uh, a grant for under the chip, a chips act, which could be imperiled by the incoming Trump administration. Uh, Gelsinger tried a lot of different things, but in a sense, the stock is down significantly. The market value's down, they're getting clobbered.

You know, it's just an older company that has struggled and know Steven and, and Kimberly and can, can talk more about this, but he's gone and there'd been speculation that he was going to leave. There was even a rumor a couple of months ago that Qualcomm was looking into acquiring part or all of the company. Um, it's a sad situation.

He is a good guy. Um, he, he tried this costly turnaround and trying to make the company a, a contract manufacturer for other chip firms. And, um, it just, it just didn't work out.

It hasn't panned out. Kimberly, you want to try it or you want me to? Um, well, I've been interacting with Pat since he had joined EMC after he left, um, Intel.

And my admiration and praise for him is, I, I just posted up on LinkedIn. I said, of all the CEOs I've interacted with, he is probably the smartest, the most strategic to me, as well as real and sincere as any CEO is up there. And, um, you, you get what you get.

He, there is no, you know, the, the analysts, when we go into analyst meetings, we have q and a sessions with them. They do what they do, et cetera. I mean, the thing that really kind of took me and said he understands, he has a vision, he sees where things are going is when he took on the, the helm for VMware and VMware was at, was at its height with vSphere.

And we were just starting to move into this thing that nobody knew what it was, but it was containers. And in those meetings, in the back, in, in the meetings strategically, basically he was saying, you reinvent yourself as a container company or you're going down. That's more or less what he said to the entire stack.

And you have to go push through this and make this happen. And he did. He, he lit the fire on those people to doing it in a way that was elegant, sincere, strategic in the view.

They did not execute out that. And also Intel hired than Intel a little bit later. I think it was about two years, because we heard that at two different, um, analyst sessions that he was talking about the first time was that we're doing this.

And we all went, what the heck are you talking about? The next time is what they had done those last 12 months. And we're just starting to eek out some things.

And now we see where VMware is. They didn't reinvent, but he was making them reinvent. I think this is personally as strategic as I saw him, as strategic as he has the vision.

I think this is a mistake by Intel. I can be very, very wrong because I really don't know the business of the Foundry business. But he's a visionary and he knows where this needs to go.

And it's a tragedy. It's also will be a tragedy for the United States because what I'm afraid they're gonna do is they're gonna take this infamous company and split it up into a bunch of parts and pieces. And that's gonna be really sad.

Yeah, I, I'm, I, that's why I wanted to hear from you. 'cause I know that you know Pat probably better than than I do, man. I, I completely agree with you.

Pat Gelsinger was the, the total package. Mm-Hmm. Um, when he came into Intel, my reaction was, well, it's recorded on the gestalt, it rundown if anybody wants to look it up from a few years back.

Um, I literally, the news came in while we were on air and, uh, and we stopped everything to talk about it because Pat, as, as Kimberly said, pat is probably the best CEOI ever knew personally. And, um, and professionally, someone who is everything that Intel needed. He is technical, he has incredible business skills, he has incredible charisma, uh, leadership abilities.

And not only that, but I've been saying this ever since he took charge in Intel, he had the right strategy, absolutely a hundred percent the right strategy. But right from the beginning, what I've been wondering about and worrying about and talking about is it, will they give him the reigns to do it? Because what Intel needed was some really tough management, and that's what Gelsinger was doing.

And now he's gone. Um, the fact that this came out, um, a I I, I don't want to make any assumptions here or anything, but, uh, so he retires on a Sunday after a holiday weekend. Nobody says anything.

There's no warning. And the news is released first thing Monday morning while everybody's still asleep, uh, on the West Coast. Um, I just, uh, I, I don't even know what to say about it, except that I really doubt that he retired, uh, uh, voluntarily.

And, um, and, and I just can't imagine he would either, because his, because work's not done. He's still trying to rebuild Intel. He's, he done, he did so many hard things to try to, to to, to get that ship moving in the right direction.

Uh, the Foundry business, the, the refocusing, the shedding of, of products and, and, and staff, uh, that work isn't done. And as Kimberly said, uh, what I think is going to come next, I absolutely agree with you, what is going to come next. Especially Gwin that MJ is in charge of basically the products, uh, literally the products, um, that Foundry is separate and that the, um, the CFO, uh, is stepping in as co CEO.

This absolutely smells like we're gonna split this company up. There's gonna be a foundry company, there's gonna be a products company, there's gonna be a, you know, I dunno, whatever else we can do with this, um, the attempt to restart Intel is done. Cool.

So the co CEOs are, are, as you mentioned, Steven David Zinner, who's the CFO, and then Michelle Johnston, um, Holta, who's the CEO of Intel products. Um, yes. Just, and they are looking for a full-time, CEO, but that's, You know, those, they're contemporary.

That's gonna happen term. They're, they're, they're interim. There's gonna be a full, they're interim.

Right. Let Mere gonna Look for fulltime Person, eventually. MJ is, my understanding was that she is, um, full CEO of the products group.

She's not Intel. That's correct. At least that's my reading of its Right.

She's stay CEO of product's of Intel itself. Yeah. Yeah.

She gonna do both. So let me, let me take a different tact on this a little bit first. So first of all, Kimberly, Steven, I agree with you, pat Gelsinger is a visionary in, quite frankly, a industry where we're, we're short on visionaries and very long on snake oil.

Right? And so his loss, I think will be felt, not just at Intel, but in the industry in general, if, if he's truly retiring, right? Or is that, you know, and, and, and if he is truly retiring, let me throw a hypothesis out there.

He has been under assault for the last nine months, easily as this stock a year, as this stock has taken a hit. Right? They, they missed the boat on the GPU thing.

Yeah. That gave Nvidia an opening. A MD has been biting at their ankles forever and ever, and has made a lot of progress.

The chip market has changed. It's not the Wintel monopoly that the intel we knew. And he knew, as you said, he knew what needed to be done.

And it, and it was tough medicine. And sometimes administering tough medicine is tough. Right?

And, and you make, you get people who don't want to see that through. Man takes a Thanksgiving holiday, take stock of his family and friends and where he is in his life, and we're all of an age, Kimberly, you know this, I know this. Steven, what do you do?

What? Why do I keep banging my head on this wall? Is that all going to get soft before my head does?

Well, Pat's got a hard head. No, I, I Get it. It's a good Head.

I get it. But, but I think he would bang his head on that, on that wall until he sets Intel. Right.

And until he lives up to the promise of the company, uh, as established by his very illustrious predecessors. But one, if you get to the point where they're just not gonna let you do it, you realize that they're just not gonna let you do what you need that needs to get done. They're not gonna let VMware become a container company.

They're going to keep a contained, no pun intended, in tan Zu. And, and, and, you know, and Tan's gonna be this kind of left field thing, not the main business. Um, the same thing with Intel there.

You know. Now, what does this mean for Intel? Something obviously is gonna happen.

I think the best we could hope for is that someone would buy it whole, though. I don't know if, you know, if you're a, a Gordon Gecko kind of dude, if that's the right thing. 'cause the, the parts are probably worth more at this point than the, than the whole.

Right. Um, but it's, it, it, this isn't guys where you are personally saying, you know, what a loss of Pat Gelsinger. I'm saying, what a loss for an American icon.

Yeah. And that's, I, I agree with that. And I, I did say that that is, it's more than just Pat, it's Intel as well about potentially where this is going and what this means.

Yeah. Um, that it is an icon. You know, we saw this happen with ge.

You know, I dealt, I was working with GE very closely when I was with IBM many years ago when Welch was there. And it, it was brutal. It was brutal with ge.

And I was also actually worked for GE when Welsh WeCh Welsh was there. And it was brutal to do that. The discipline, the requirements, the management of it.

It was like, oh my God, you know? But you know, when he left and the next regime came in, they, they skipped the beat. They, they missed.

And we see what happened to ge. They, they scattered it from all over the place. It's not what it used to be, um, in Melt, I mean, Welch and in Melt, you know, that relationship completely fell apart between the two of them.

Um, Jeff Emmelt, uh, the, the following up, CEO. So it just, it's all of that saying, we lost ge. And, and that, and I think Indu, you know, that's what, why we talk about when companies last for a hundred years, you know, like, oh my gosh, you know, they go through these things and I, you know, and Intel was one of the first ones that basically said, you walk out the door, you turn around and come back in and say, how do I have to reinvent my company in order to survive?

And, and frankly, that's, that's another thing that's really interesting about why we sold, you know, sold the evaluator group to Tuum. That's what Daniel is doing, is he's looking at the analyst industry to say, how does this industry have to change if everybody is so mess p****d off at, you know, the leading analyst industry analysts in the industry. And yet they still, you know, they still go and say, okay, here's my money.

Here's how you, how we're gonna transact with you. But at the same time, they're looking for other resources to do things. And that's, that's the nature of industries.

Um, and, and sometimes they have to go down. It's why All these companies that, these venerable companies like Intel and Cisco and IBM, they're all going through these patches, right? They'd been around decades.

And this guy and Pat was again, just, just an honorable man, a great person, a great strategist who was the prodigal son. They brought him back in despite all odds, maybe he was too late. I mean, they're in the process of laying off 15,000 people.

I don't know if anyone could have turned it around. I mean, just the, given the, what he encountered or what he had to work against. Yeah.

I mean, the headwinds in the industry were certainly there, and you had a lot of inertia in the machine. But, um, nevertheless, I, Kimberly, at the end of the day, I agree with you. I think it is a loss.

It's a loss for Intel. It's a loss for our industry, for the tech industry and a whole, I I think it'll be interesting to see how long he stays retired. Is this, does he really, like, has he just said, I'm done?

Or, or, I I think you're right, Alan. I, I, I, I think, I, I don't, I don't think it's over for him yet. Mm-Hmm.

He's still a fairly young man. I no, his next adventure, right? And yeah.

And what, what, what'll get his juices flowing. Um, in the meantime, we'll keep our eye, you know, if Fu Germ is a company that follows the chip market really closely, right? Daniel himself, and of course, the Six five Media, uh, Daniel and Patrick Moore and, and, and a bunch of the other folks.

So we'll be covering it. We'll be covering it here on Textron Gang. I, I think I join all of you in wishing Pat Gelsinger nothing but good, good smooth sailing winds at his back, and peace in after a, a rocky turbulent, uh, time over here at Intel.

So, with that, let's take a break. We've got more crazy news. Well, it's not crazy necessarily, but those wild and crazy people at the FTC, what are they up to with Microsoft?

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And now, with what would've been our lead story today, had not the, uh, Intel Pat Gelsinger News came up, uh, right before the weekend. It was announced that the FTC actually sent Microsoft a letter. Those are not the kinda letters you want to get.

It's kinda like when I see something from the IRS, um, you know, formally letting them know that they were being investigated, uh, for anti monopolistic, anti-trade pa uh, violations. And boy, I bought the, I bet they thought that was in the rear view mirror. John, you, you, uh, wrote a story on this.

What do we, what's going on? So there in the letter to Microsoft, the TFTC wants to scrutinize Microsoft's cloud and software licensing business AI offerings, particularly its relationship with open AI and cybersecurity services. Um, what's interesting is that this is happening near the end of the Biden administration.

And the FTC is being run for now by Lena Kahn, who is in the, i I would say the target of, um, The cross Being pushed out of cross hairs. That's, thank you for that word. I was trying to, I was trying to think of that perfect word, crosshairs of the Trump administration.

Although, ironically, JD Vance is a fan of hers, but, uh, Musk has been leading the calls for her to be fired. She probably is gonna be replaced. She was very anti-tech, specifically Amazon.

Um, so this investigation is probably not gonna amount to anything. It was just interesting to me and almost was like a ceremonial type of announcement rather than any type of punitive action. Um, the same thing is going on parallel with Google.

So Google lost a case to the DOJ. Now the DOJ wants to splinter off Google, which will probably not happen as well. That's probably gonna go by the wayside.

So again, it's an investigation. It was, it's, it's interesting to me. I'm not, I'm not really sure why they, they did this.

Um, I, and I'll throw it out to you all, but, uh, I don't think it's gonna really amount to much of anything. I have some thoughts, but, uh, panel gang members, I'll let you guys go first. Well, I, I will just jump in on this one and say that, um, yeah, I think that, um, a lot of the commentators are assuming things about the Trump administration that we don't know for sure.

And, uh, and chief among those is, uh, there's seems to be a broad assumption, you know, from the, you know, the coverage that we've seen of this, this news, but as well as other news, um, that the Trump administration is gonna go easy on tech. I don't think that that matches what you, we've heard from the people. Uh, as you mentioned, JD Vance has, has said some very interesting things.

We know that Elon Musk is in there, uh, whispering in Trump's ear. And we know that Trump himself has actually said some very interesting things about, uh, regulating tech. And we also know that companies like Apple and Microsoft and Google are not Trump's favorite companies generally.

Um, and the same thing can be said of Khan herself. Now, her term is technically a seven year term. Um, yes, just like the FBI director, she could be pushed out early, uh, with, with the Senate, uh, you know, backing their, their president.

Certainly that that could happen. But, you know, we don't know. We don't know that for sure.

And a lot of the things that she's alleging are things that I suspect the Trump administration may actually be on board with, um, somewhat. So I think it's, I think it's really not right to say, oh, this is Lena Kahn's, you know, final shot after, uh, you know, right before she gets fired. Uh, we don't know that.

Well, there's a certain un uh, unpredictability that Trump is trying to reach. I mean, this there, and in weird ways, it's, it's kind of an effective strategy because you're right, Stephen, if you go back to all these initial actions against big tech, it was 2019 when Trump was president in the Department of Justice, and FTC went after the, the four companies or said they were gonna go after the four companies, which they eventually did. I think in a sense, what they might be trying to do is what they announced, the, the nominee for the f uh, the, uh, SEC who has got some very strong opinions about censorship in big tech.

Um, you've in a sense what they're kind of playing the carrot and the stick. I think that what Trump is doing is he's intimidating these companies or his people are, and, but he's also playing good and bad up at the same time. John, excuse me, was that the SEC or the F-C-C-S-E Or sorry, Federal's communicate.

Yes. FCC, I'm so sorry. Yeah.

Uh, alphabet soup, uh, Brendan Carr. FC Yes. Federal Communications Commission.

Sorry. Yes. Um, so in a sense, you're getting mixed messages, right?

They're gonna reward big tech. They're gonna go after them. And I think in a sense, that strategy is working because he's getting bleeders of big tech, like Zuckerberg, for instance, to go visit him and, and kiss the ring and see how they can, can accommodate.

I mean, there is antagonistic feelings, so towards big tech, but I think he also wants to throw them kind of in, in order behind It. John, John, John, let's not give the crazy man great do for big, crazy. I wrote actually in this, in this Boy Once, I will.

No, no. Because how he runs, how Donald, he did it in his first administration. It's how he runs his business.

It's, did you ever see the Star Trek episode where they land on this planet that's still stuck in like Roman times, but it's already like the 19 hundreds. But it's still ro rule by Rome. And the emperor pa plays factions off against each other to see who wins.

And some of the factions murder each other, some don't, some, you know, whatever. But a, a a, a winner emerges. That's how he, that's how he governs by get, it's who talks, who talks to him last.

He plays these. So you're gonna see the Elon Musk fa Protect faction, Peter Theo versus the anti-tech faction, and they're gonna play off against each other. And then he, you know, he fancies himself Duche, and he'll come in and make a decision on these things.

So I think, okay, so you're talking about Trump, but I think we talking about this Microsoft thing, which is driven by the Biden administration's staffing. Absolutely. Okay.

But we can't assume that the new administration's just gonna throw it out. There's gonna be different factions who support it. And, and let me just say something else.

This is not akin to Google. Google, you had an actual judge, a, a court adjudicate a judgment that said Google was a, a monopolistic, that Google was a monopoly, and then asked the Justice Department for remedies to this monopolistic practice. Right?

That's, that's kind of an, from a legal point of view, that's an end game. That's an end game. This is just a letter, you know, the opening salvo.

But What about, um, But this is what's really, this, this, what, this is what I'm scratching my head about is because the last time we went through the monopoly antitrust analysis, we're looking at Microsoft and, and their operating system dominating the world. And I'm just not seeing that same kind of domination with what they have in the market. So I'm like going, why are they wasting the paper or the digital digits on this one and delivering a request?

I, I don't know. That doesn't make sense to Kimberly. You're right.

That's, to me, that's whys what, to me, the timing doesn't make any sense. Well's like a comparing salvo. Well, right.

From this woman part to the, Um, I just wanna say the part of the, the argument where the competitors like Slack and Zoom saying, if you sign up for some of Microsoft services, we'll give you Microsoft Teams free. So that's where the competitors come in and say, well, that's not fair, um, For meeting software for an example. But, But to be fair to Microsoft, they've disb bundled it, right?

There was one time at one point, so now we're talking about bundling office product team was bundled with office. I think they unbundled team and I don't know, 'cause I'm not a Windows or team user, but I believe they've unbundled team from office, if I'm not mistaken. Not, I think they made some concessions.

They're Not really strongly. I mean, one of the things we've seen is that they have influence our friends that are big PC distributor or manufacturers, and saw those manufacturer now lean into use, always using teams. And that's been an interesting shift.

And that's happened in the last six months that, you know, they used to have other items, but now they're, you know, they are only using team, team. When you say they're internally using, or they only ship PCs with teams on 'em? Um, if I'm correct, it's Dell is a uses team only for when we do our briefings.

Now, I mean, internally. Internally, yes. And, and there's times that that, you know, I'm, I've, it's been quoted back to me, um, when we, I've sent over like a Zoom for a meeting with them that they have to reinstall it because they can't keep it on their computer.

So I've seen that, sir. There's some accuracy with that. And we've seen, I've seen that in a couple different places.

Besides de So on, on this story, though, one of the Yes, you're right. I I definitely have seen that too, Kimberly. And of course we see the same thing with Cisco and WebEx.

WebEx and with Google and, and Google meet. Mm-Hmm. But on this, on this thing, you know, back to the, the, the point that you made earlier, I think that what's going on here is I think Lena Kahn does know that she's probably on the way out.

And I think what she's doing here is basically soliciting the evidence that her successor will need to decide whether they want to bring a case here. You know, I think this is actually a pretty smart move by her to continue her work even after she's gone. Because if, you know, they have to respond, yes, she's, she's still in there for two more months, she's gonna make them respond.

If there's evidence of monopolistic practices, then she's gonna tie that up with a bow and put it on the desk of her successor and say, have at it. And, and what will they do with that? Well, I think that Trump is not too pro Microsoft.

I think that the, the successor will probably not be too pro Microsoft. And I think this story has legs. Well, let, let's, let's, let's examine the, uh, different parts of the alleged practices.

One is that by making Microsoft Office part of Azure. Azure, right? It's giving Azure an unfair advantage.

Yeah. We're here at AWS reinvent with 65,000 other people. It's very, it's very, it's very hard to say.

Azure is a monopoly here, right? Has has office probably, you know, you know what they say, if you take office users off of the Microsoft Cloud, and you take Google Workplace users off of Google, Oracle Cloud is pretty damn close in size to them, right? Um, so I, I don't really see that rising to the level of monopolistic.

The second part is the bundling of teams against Slack, zoom other kind of, uh, workplace teams without using the word teams. They got a good name for that. I, uh, but anyway, that seems an easy, okay, let's unbundle that and not force it down people's throats similar to an internet explorer, it's not a reason to break up Chrome over make Chrome.

I make Google sell Chrome. I don't think it's a reason to shut down Microsoft either. The third thing though, is the real gotcha.

And that's the open AI relationship. People are scared to death in Washington of ai, right? All a, a lot of them, you know, Elon Musk included, signed off on the Let's Go Slow with AI until he was doing his own AI thing, right?

And, um, the fact that Microsoft has this relationship with open ai, the leading AI player, right? There are some companies like Amazon that say, okay, we're gonna invest in ours and we're gonna, you know, make that competitive. Others say, break it up.

And I think of the three stools on this leg, that's probably the biggest one that kind of scares people. And the FTD was, look, they were beginning, they were looking at several months ago. They said they were looking into open AI and Microsoft and have relationship so that there is something there.

Yes. So then I scratched my head about why do they list cybersecurity on there? Yeah.

That, that's, that's Point's so like on, huh? Well, Microsoft is known to be so strong on cybersecurity, You know, especially their latest, you know, ICT Exactly. Sent out there, you know, by the way, do We still, do we, do we have any idea what the outage, we still don't know what the outage was about either for, I mean, Days later, You know, it's the, it's the news cycle.

John, we, that's old news. Okay, let's investigate it though. All right.

But I, I do think the AI thing is what it is. I, because you know, that, look, that's where the action is, right? And I think that's, uh, and, and the funny part about it is, is I see open AI trying to kinda decouple their Microsoft relationship, right?

And so it'll be, and that'll be interesting to bear it out, but you know what? We'll wait till after January 20th. Let's see, does Lena Kahn keep her job?

Who does come in there? What is the, who wins out in the palace? Intrigue over, you know, which faction wins out here?

ProTech, Anti-Tech, pro MiTek, not your tech. Who the heck knows it's gonna be, it's gonna be an interesting time, for sure. Um, let's take a break on Textron Gang.

We're gonna come back. Bonnie's got some, an interesting piece she's done on Cop 29. You're watching Techron Gang.

I'm Bonnie Schneider, sustainability contributor to the Techron Group. I'm excited to introduce you to a groundbreaking new initiative from Techron Research, the sustainability pulse meter. The pulse meter offers valuable insights into how environmental responsibility factors into tech purchasing decisions for key players in the industry.

Position your company as a leader in the industry and differentiate from your competitors with a sustainability pulse meter offered exclusively from Techstrong Research. Hi everyone, welcome back to the Techron Gang. Well, recently on another part of the world in Baku, an important conference was taking place COP 29.

It's a leading un, uh, global climate conference. And one of the big topics this year was tech, especially with the energy use and energy demand anticipated for ai. I take a closer look at some of the new agreements that came out of COP 29 and the tech industry's response.

Hi everyone, I'm Bonnie Schneider with your Ecotech Analyst Insights, the United Nations Annual Climate Summit Cop 29 recently wrapped up in Baku, Azerbaijan for the first time ever, the conference dedicated and entire day to digital technology launching the Green Digital Action Declaration. Over 1000 governments, companies and organizations pledge to harness digital solutions while addressing their growing carbon footprint. Data center Power demand is projected to consume nearly 3% of global electricity use by 2050.

At one cough 29 panel hosted by Deloitte, Nvidia highlighted efforts to make data centers more energy efficient, including using liquid cooled GPUs direct to chip liquid cooling helps to reduce both power and water use. They noted that accelerated computing platforms offer greater efficiency, providing another avenue to reduce energy consumption. Incremental gains like the adoption of liquid cooling are promising steps forward.

With initiatives like the Green Digital Action Declaration launched at COP 29, the tech industry has a unique opportunity to prioritize sustainability early in design, thus paving the way for substantial and long lasting carbon reductions. So this agreement was also about money, and some big numbers were named at the conclusion, meaning 300 billion yearly by 2035 to invest in green technology and clean energy. So, uh, the, the agreement is showing that we're getting, uh, the enthusiasm from global leaders from around the world, of course, but also the financial backing.

So this is going to open up, I think, new opportunities for investment in green technology going forward. It was a pretty interesting announcement, and, um, just in, in my world of sustainability, a lot of folks were, are talking about it. I'd love to hear the panel's thoughts.

So, you know, I found Baku, which is Azer bi Azerbaijan, right? An interesting place to hold this. Um, but I don't want to be cynical, and I'm trying not to be cynical.

I'm just starting to get the feeling that some of the green global climate change, you know, the do good or tree hugging kind of stuff, we just don't, the, the countries that we need to be firmly behind this are not, and it's okay. They all give lip service to it. They sign these agreements, but when push comes to shoing, gasoline gets too expensive, or the winter temperatures get real low, and we need heat or, or jobs.

And, and, you know, uh, administrations are in danger of being lost because of poor economic. The, the, the will isn't there to see these things through, and the, and when there's no will, there's no money. And when there's no money, it just doesn't happen.

And it pains me to say this, but I, I think that's the real politic of it. But you have to keep in mind too, uh, as I've said previously, and I just keep saying the real politic is really where the business interest is gonna go. And, um, you know, I basically, the, the, the, the horses out of the barn on solar, uh, we just keep installing more.

Um, we have installed more in the last quarter than we've installed fossil fuels yet again. Um, in fact, solar is already cheaper than fossil fuels. Doesn't matter what these potentially conflicted people with oil and gas interests want to do.

If oil and gas is too expensive and solar is cheaper, the industry's gonna move that way. And that's what's gonna happen, uh, whether they agree to it or not, and whether the activists, uh, protest or not, and whether, uh, they make secret oil and gas deals or not. I mean, you're right that, um, you know, I mean, the, the president of, of Cop 29 was secretly recorded making oil and gas deals during this event in Azerbaijan.

Yeah, that happened. Um, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what these people do, because ultimately at the end of the day, uh, electricity and solar and batteries just keep getting cheaper.

And that's the direction that industry's gonna go. Well, Especially in the tech industry. Because the big focus, of course, is we know AI is already using a lot of energy.

There's been many estimates of how much it will use by 2030, by 2050, but I think there's an unknown factor, um, to know exactly how to quantify that and how to measure it. And that's why one of the reasons you're seeing this emphasis in these bold, um, agreements and investments as well. You know, I just had a solar company over my house to quote me on converting the solar at my home and between installing some panels and battery and, and some better installation around my air conditioning.

'cause in South Florida, right, that's our biggest, by far, the biggest use of energy is your air conditioner. I will be 100%, actually 102% positive, right? So I, I'll be, you know, I think I'll, I pay $25 a month of the FPL utility just because to be on the grid, it's $25 a month.

But that, that'll be it. Um, it, the, the, and I, I'll give you real numbers. It was $30,000 to convert my house and, and put battery in.

Not terrible, right? So the ROI on that, the ROI on, it was seven years. Again, not terrible, but it was very much predicated on a large, uh, tax rebate.

And if you took that tax rebate out, the ROI on it, I think doubled, which would probably be a bridge too far for me. And, you know, and I don't know if it was just a sales tactic of the salesman, and I didn't react well to it, but he basically said, if I didn't act by the end of the year, no guarantee that that next year that tax rebate would be available to me, depending on administrations and stuff, be who I am. When he told me that, I said, I'll wait till next year.

I, I don't like to have a gun in my head to make decisions. Um, but that, that's the reality. And glant, this is not industrial, it's not tech, it's just one, one homeowner.

But that's, that's, that's what people are being, you know, John Q Public is hearing and what we're dealing with. So I don't know The tax rebate situation is, is, yeah, I don't suspect that the Trump administration is gonna subsidize solar panels. Um, but in an industry where prices have been dropping at an annual rate of, uh, 44%, who cares?

Um, you know, you'll actually make up more, um, uh, in the cost of batteries and solar in terms of, uh, manufacturing, uh, learning curve and price efficiency than that tax rebate would be worth. So Goodbye. But, but a as the consumer of it though, Steven, to me, it's the ROI.

Yeah, Right. And the ROI will look better when everything is another 10% cheaper, another 10% cheaper, another 10%. So should I wait?

Eventually the ROI is gonna hit you. So when, how long should I wait? Well, that's actually the problem.

There's actually, uh, I think a lot of people are looking at it and thinking, wait a second, if I invest this year, and people actually saw that previously. So a lot of people, um, went out. Um, you know, we did a, a solar study of our house actually four years ago.

And, um, it was almost a hundred thousand dollars to install solar panels on our house, which of course we said, uh, no. Um, the fact that it's 30,000, we actually just looked at one, um, uh, here, uh, a similar system for 20,000, um, shows you kind of the, the, the curve of this thing. Some of the people that invested a few years back are actually kind of, uh, wishing that they had waited because things have gotten so much cheaper.

Now. It's, um, it's kind of a wild time. Yeah.

I should add 25 year guarantee on my panel. Steven. Just throwing it out there.

I could get, if anyone's interested, I'll get you the name of the company, but I, I, I haven't pulled the trigger on it yet. I'm, I'm kind of contemplating it, but, um, just something to think about. Bonnie, great job though, in bringing this up.

Uh, you watched it here on Text Drunk Gang, but if you wanna watch it or share it with your friends, it is available of course on text, drunk tv. Right. Um, guys, if we don't have anything else, Kimberly, I'm sure you have a full day of reinvent.

What, what's on your schedule? Um, we don't kick off until about noon. So from there we go into the evening, but we have keynote at very, the, the opening keynote is this evening.

Yes, I saw that. As Is typical of reinvent, everything happens in the evenings here in Las Vegas. I guess it's, it, well it's Vegas, but it's also reinvent because it's, uh, it's the hoodies and, and all that kind of stuff.

So, so here I am, have my suit. Of course I show up with that, but there we go. Well, I think Jacket, Andy, Jess Used To have the, Oh, Andy, Andy, Jess used to have that, that eighties band play at night, right?

They play all the queen covers before he missed keynotes. It was like classic opening. Yeah.

Yeah. So we've got, um, the, they'll, they'll kick it off with the lunch. We'll have briefing on all the Yes, I saw those.

An analyst briefing. Yeah, they, they'll we'll have a whole bunch of briefings and then tomorrow there is, uh, deep dives that they have. They, they set aside a room just for us, um, and to go into deep dives and having access to the executives to q and a, um, about the different topics that we're interested.

And then we'll have some, I'll have some one-on-ones with, um, the area that I cover very much so is the data infrastructure and the technologies and the data infrastructure. And so over 3, 3, 2, 1, 2 and a half days, I think there's probably about maybe four hours that are free. Really.

All right. Well, so, So we'll open my brain and just pour it in. Sounds good.

Sounds good. We'll be up here in our, uh, perch on the 29th floor, uh, overlooking. So, and we'll be doing videos from here though, Mike Ard and Mitchell, and the rest of the text on Gang will be out and about doing their thing.

Um, we'll be doing gang live all week from here as well, right. So stay tuned for that. Actually, I don't know if it'll be live, but we'll be doing gang and on a slight delay.

'cause uh, it's early in the morning here. Um, Steven, you're not coming to Vegas, you're staying back. I am.

I, uh, I'm protesting, um, Amazon's pending acquisition of Intel. Um, and their conversion Of you, it may not be a bad natural power that would Merit, that would merit an investigation. Yeah.

Now I, I dunno, I'm, uh, Hey, you know, it could happen. No, I, but, but, uh, the tech field, a team is there, uh, we're gonna be doing some, uh, some behind the scenes stuff. We'll be, uh, hopefully appearing on camera along with, uh, our friends, uh, from, uh, Textron and Rum.

And, um, I will be following closely Fantastic Alrightyy John, and keep us posted on the Valley, Bonnie, we'll have, we'll see you I guess next week on Gang for your Weekly. That sounds good. Okay.

Alrighty. Stephen, maybe we can, as long as you're home, we'll get you on for some of our shows this week, giving us sort of the, not in Las Vegas view of things. But, uh, until then, that's it.

That's a wrap for this version of Textron Gang. We're gonna try to keep everyone out there appraised of what's going on. If you're not here at reinvent, we'll do our best.

This Alan Shimmel, we're out.