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2 episodes with project maven
4 episodes with project maven
2 episodes with project maven
3 episodes with project maven
3 episodes with project maven
2 episodes with project maven
2 episodes with project maven
2 episodes with project maven
2 episodes with project maven
Send us a textIn this episode of FedBiz'5, host Bobby Testa dives into one of the biggest shifts in government contracting: the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in federal procurement. With more than 200 active AI use cases across federal agencies—from the DoD's Project Maven to the IRS's chatbot—AI is no longer emerging. It's operational, funded, and rapidly expanding.Bobby breaks down five critical insights government contractors need to understand right now if they want to stay ahead in this evolving space. This episode isn't about theory—it's about real agency usage, real budgets, real compliance expectations, and real market strategies that help small to mid-sized contractors show up and compete.You'll learn:How AI is currently being used across federal agenciesWhere AI-related opportunities are growing (hint: DoD, VA, NIH)What regulatory expectations you need to prepare for (yes, FAR clauses are coming)How to position your AI capabilities in SAM.gov, DSBS, and capability statementsWhy early outreach—RFIs, Industry Days, OSDBUs, and teaming—is more important than everWhether your company offers AI tools, supports infrastructure, provides training, or consults on ethical compliance, this episode will show you how to align with what agencies are actually buying.We also explore how tools like FedBiz365 can uncover pre-solicitation activity, highlight AI-related trends, and help you build a smart, targeted strategy based on real data—not guesswork.And of course, Bobby keeps it real (and funny) as always, because what's a discussion about AI and federal procurement without a little commentary on IRS hold music, fantasy football algorithms, and black-box buzzwords?
In this powerhouse episode of Nephilim Death Squad, we welcome back Brad Lail of The Awakened Podcast for an unfiltered dive into media psyops, deep state propaganda, AI warfare, and the Nephilim-infested underbelly of global power. The squad unpacks the hypnotic grip of modern media, explores the roots of government mind control, and breaks down the occult web connecting Big Tech, secret military programs, and ancient bloodlines. Brad shares jaw-dropping insights about Project Maven, the RH-negative bloodline's ties to the Nephilim, and his firsthand encounters with UFOs and missing time. Plus: the inside scoop on Bohemian Grove 3 and why BlackRock and Vanguard are the true puppet masters of your reality. This one's a red-pill overload—strap in and stay sharp.FOLLOW BRAD: The Awakened Podcast - Spirituality, Paranormal, Hidden History Podcast☠️ NEPHILIM DEATH SQUAD Skip the ads. Get early access. Tap into the hive mind of dangerous RTRDs in our private Telegram channel — only on Patreon:
The convergence of artificial intelligence with national security agendas has emerged as a defining shift in global power dynamics. The militarization of artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. It is a present-day reality unfolding at the nexus of defense, surveillance, and technology. As machine learning capabilities grow more sophisticated and integrated into critical systems, the military-industrial complex has found fertile ground in Silicon Valley's innovations. What was once experimental is now operational, and the line between civilian and military AI has begun to blur in unsettling ways. As a legal professional, I'm trained to follow the chain of accountability who acted, who decided, who bears responsibility. In court, every consequence has a name attached to it. But on a digitized battlefield governed by algorithms, that chain snaps. There is no witness to cross-examine, no general to question, no operator who made the final call. What happens when war is executed by systems that cannot reason, cannot hesitate, and cannot be held to account? This article traces the trajectory of AI in military use, examines the ethical pitfalls of autonomous weaponry, and explores the broader implications of entrusting war to algorithms. Emergence of AI in Modern Warfare In 2018, Google made headlines for refusing to renew its involvement in Project Maven, a U.S. Department of Defense initiative that applied artificial intelligence to analyze drone footage. Following internal protests and a wave of public scrutiny, the company pledged to avoid developing AI for "weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people." Fast-forward to 2023, and Google is now one of several tech giants contributing to the Pentagon's AI ambitions through contracts under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) project. This shift reveals a stark evolution not only in corporate policy but also in the very role AI is beginning to play in modern warfare. Artificial intelligence, once used merely for backend military logistics or benign simulations, is now being integrated directly into decision-making processes, battlefield assessments, and autonomous weapons systems. As companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Palantir deepen their collaboration with defense agencies, a complex ethical and strategic dilemma emerges: Who controls the future of war, and what does it mean to hand lethal authority to machines? The militarization of AI poses unprecedented questions about human agency, moral accountability, and global security. As governments rush to develop next-generation warfare capabilities, the boundaries between innovation and destruction are becoming dangerously blurred. From Backend Support to the Battlefield: A Brief History The integration of artificial intelligence into military infrastructure did not begin with drones or kill lists. In its early days, AI was a tool for simulation-based training, data sorting, and logistics optimization. The technology was used to forecast equipment failures, manage supply chains, and assist in intelligence analysis. As machine learning evolved, so did its utility to the defense sector. The 2010s saw an increase in Pentagon investments in tech partnerships. One of the most notable collaborations was Project Maven, which used AI to improve the analysis of surveillance footage. Google's role in the project sparked an internal rebellion, with thousands of employees signing a petition demanding the company withdraw from "the business of war." The protest worked temporarily. Over time, however, the military's appetite for AI intensified. The Department of Defense established the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) in 2018, signaling a deeper commitment to integrating AI across all branches of the armed forces. Simultaneously, Silicon Valley's skepticism toward military projects began to soften, influenced by geopol...
Dive into an exciting surprise episode of All Quiet on the Second Front with host Tyler Sweatt, joined by Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan and Stephen Rodriguez from the Atlantic Council's Software-Defined Warfare Commission. This episode cuts through the complexities of defense technology to focus squarely on the transformative role of software in modern warfare. Tyler, Jack, and Stephen discuss Department of Defense initiatives, underscore the urgency of innovative strategies, and share personal anecdotes that illuminate the path toward a software-driven defense landscape, shedding light on pivotal developments that are reshaping military engagement across the globe. Tune in to understand the stakes and opportunities in software-defined warfare.What's Happening on the Second FrontInsights into Project Maven and the JAIC's impact on military strategies.Lessons from Jack Shanahan's Air Force career and Stephen Rodriguez's tech ventures.How the DoD is adapting to software-centric warfare for technological superiority.The need for rapid, actionable strategies to ensure future readiness.Connect with JackLinkedIn: Jack ShanahanConnect with StephenLinkedIn: Stephen RodriguezConnect with TylerLinkedIn: Tyler Sweatt
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, and Jacob Helberg, discuss AI-enabled warfare, the importance of taking clear ethical stances, the evolution of Silicon Valley culture, and the integration of tech innovation into governmental defense systems at the Hill and Valley Forum in Washington, DC. —
A Note from James:Is our military way behind other countries in terms of using the latest technology with AI, with drones, with biotech, with cybersecurity? I think for many years we know we're behind on supersonic weapons. Are we behind on AI? How did Hamas send undetected a thousand or so paragliders into Israel without Israel detecting it? Are we behind on the AI that's in sensors? What is going on?So, with the help of Chris Kirchhoff, who wrote the book "Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War," we answer these questions and more.Episode Description:In this episode, James Altucher hosts Christopher Kirchhoff to explore the critical question: Is the US military lagging behind in technology? They discuss the current technological shortcomings of the military, historical contexts, and how metrics of military power are evolving. Kirchhoff provides an insightful analysis of the Hamas attack as a case study to highlight technological vulnerabilities and failures. The conversation expands to cover the rise of drones, the innovative Replicator Initiative, and the crucial role of AI and machine learning in military operations. Kirchhoff shares his experiences bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, offering a rare glimpse into the challenges and successes of modern military technology integration.What You'll Learn:Technological Shortcomings: Understand the areas where the US military is currently falling behind other nations in technology.Impact of Drones: Learn about the transformative role drones play in modern warfare and their potential to change military strategies.Replicator Initiative: Discover the Pentagon's innovative approach to building low-cost autonomous weapon systems.AI in Military Operations: Gain insights into how AI and machine learning are being integrated into military strategies and operations.Bridging Technology Gaps: Explore the challenges and successes of connecting Silicon Valley's rapid innovation with the Pentagon's strategic needs.Chapters:01:30 Introduction: Is the US Military Lagging in Technology?02:15 Current Technological Shortcomings03:20 Historical Context of Military Superiority03:59 Changing Metrics of Military Power06:42 Hamas Attack: A Case Study08:15 Technological Vulnerabilities and Failures10:22 US Military's Technological Lag11:42 The Rise of Drones in Modern Warfare14:52 The Replicator Initiative17:54 Bridging the Gap Between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon24:39 Challenges in Government Contracting28:35 Innovative Contracting Solutions31:17 Discovering Joby Aviation: The Future of Flying Cars32:24 Military Applications and Collaboration with Joby34:53 The Rise of Drones in Modern Warfare37:12 Rogue Squadron: The Military's First Commercial Drone Unit39:32 Anduril and the Future of Combat Collaborative Aircraft45:14 AI and Machine Learning in Military Operations51:31 Ethical Issues in Military Technology01:04:02 Strategic Stability and the Future of Warfare01:09:35 Conclusion: Bridging Silicon Valley and the MilitaryAdditional Resources:Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of WarJoby AviationAnduril IndustriesDefense Innovation Unit (DIU)DARPA ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to “The James Altucher Show” wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn
The U.S. military once used Google's tech without their employees knowing. Anna Butrico explains the complicated history behind “Project Maven.” Google famously used the slogan, “Don't be evil,” to guide its business practices. However, many Google employees were upset when they learned that the company had partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense on Project Maven, whose goal was to produce AI that could track people and vehicles. Is it immoral for a tech company to partner with the military to create war technology? Or is it immoral not to? -------------------------------------------------------- About Anna Butrico: Anna Butrico is Chief of Staff of Odgers Berndtson U.S. Anna supports the OBUS leadership team in driving the firm's growth strategy. Prior to joining Odgers, Anna was a senior communications associate at the McChrystal Group, where she advised Fortune 100 leaders on how to tap into human potential to achieve stronger business outcomes. A communications expert and former speechwriter, she is the co-author, with GEN (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal, of Risk: A User's Guide. Anna earned her undergraduate degree in English from Vanderbilt University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She also studied literature at St. Anne's College at the University of Oxford. -------------------------------------------------------- About Big Think | Smarter Faster™ ► Big Think The leading source of expert-driven, educational content. With thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think helps you get smarter, faster by exploring the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century. Go Deeper with Big Think: ►Become a Big Think Member Get exclusive access to full interviews, early access to new releases, Big Think merch and more ►Get Big Think+ for Business Guide, inspire and accelerate leaders at all levels of your company with the biggest minds in business Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode, CPT Brandon Pugh sits down with Lt Gen (Ret.) John “Jack” Shanahan an expert in the artificial intelligence (AI) field to discuss AI. In his final assignment he served as the inaugural Director of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Center (JAIC). During this episode, Lt Gen (Ret.) Shanahan discusses how he became the DoD's lead on AI, standing up Project Maven as the director, the process of introducing AI into the DoD, and AI ethics in the DoD including DoD Directive 3000.09 Autonomy in Weapon Systems. The episode ends with Lt Gen (Ret.) Shanahan discussing the future of AI and potential legislation that may be proposed. NSL Practitioner's interested in reviewing resources and scholarship produced by ADN should check out the Operational Law Handbook and LOAC Documentary Supplement and other significant military legal resources available at The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School website under publications. Connect with The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School by visiting our website at https://tjaglcs.army.mil/ or on Facebook (tjaglcs), Instagram (tjaglcs), or LinkedIn (school/tjaglcs).
In this episode, CPT Brandon Pugh sits down with Lt Gen (Ret.) John “Jack” Shanahan an expert in the artificial intelligence (AI) field to discuss AI. In his final assignment he served as the inaugural Director of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Center (JAIC). During this episode, Lt Gen (Ret.) Shanahan discusses how he became the DoD's lead on AI, standing up Project Maven as the director, the process of introducing AI into the DoD, and AI ethics in the DoD including DoD Directive 3000.09 Autonomy in Weapon Systems. The episode ends with Lt Gen (Ret.) Shanahan discussing the future of AI and potential legislation that may be proposed. NSL Practitioner's interested in reviewing resources and scholarship produced by ADN should check out the Operational Law Handbook and LOAC Documentary Supplement and other significant military legal resources available at The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School website under publications. Connect with The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School by visiting our website at https://tjaglcs.army.mil/ or on Facebook (tjaglcs), Instagram (tjaglcs), or LinkedIn (school/tjaglcs).
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: AI #54: Clauding Along, published by Zvi on March 8, 2024 on LessWrong. The big news this week was of course the release of Claude 3.0 Opus, likely in some ways the best available model right now. Anthropic now has a highly impressive model, impressive enough that it seems as if it breaks at least the spirit of their past commitments on how far they will push the frontier. We will learn more about its ultimate full capabilities over time. We also got quite the conversation about big questions of one's role in events, which I immortalized as Read the Roon. Since publication Roon has responded, which I have edited into the post along with some additional notes. That still leaves plenty of fun for the full roundup. We have spies. We have accusations of covert racism. We have Elon Musk suing OpenAI. We have a new summary of simulator theory. We have NIST, tasked with AI regulation, literally struggling to keep a roof over their head. And more. Table of Contents Introduction. Table of Contents. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Predict the future. Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility. Provide basic info. LLMs: How Do They Work? Emmett Shear rederives simulators, summarizes. Copyright Confrontation. China finds a copyright violation. Curious. Oh Elon. He sues OpenAI to… force it to change its name? Kind of, yeah. DNA Is All You Need. Was I not sufficiently impressed with Evo last week? GPT-4 Real This Time. A question of intelligence. Fun With Image Generation. Be careful not to have too much fun. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. This will not give you a hand. They Took Our Jobs. They gave us a few back. For now, at least. Get Involved. Davidad will have direct report, it could be you. Introducing. An AI-based RPG will never work, until one does. In Other AI News. The fallout continues, also other stuff. More on Self-Awareness. Not the main thing to worry about. Racism Remains a Problem for LLMs. Covert is a generous word for this. Project Maven. Yes, we are putting the AIs in charge of weapon targeting. Quiet Speculations. Claimed portents of various forms of doom. The Quest for Sane Regulation. NIST might need a little help. The Week in Audio. Sergey Brin Q&A. Rhetorical Innovation. It is not progress. We still keep trying. Another Open Letter. Also not really progress. We still keep trying. Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult. Recent roundup. Security is Also Difficult. This too is not so covert, it turns out. The Lighter Side. It's me, would you like a fries with that? Language Models Offer Mundane Utility Forecast almost as well, or sometimes better, than the wisdom of crowds using GPT-4? Paper says yes. Prompt they used is here. This does require an intensive process. First, we generate search queries that are used to invoke news APIs to retrieve historical articles. We initially implement a straightforward query expansion prompt (Figure 12a), instructing the model to create queries based on the question and its background. However, we find that this overlooks sub-considerations that often contribute to accurate forecasting. To achieve broader coverage, we prompt the model to decompose the forecasting question into sub-questions and use each to generate a search query (Min et al., 2019); see Figure 12b for the prompt. For instance, when forecasting election outcomes, the first approach searches directly for polling data, while the latter creates sub-questions that cover campaign finances, economic indicators, and geopolitical events. We combine both approaches for comprehensive coverage. Next, the system retrieves articles from news APIs using the LM-generated search queries. We evaluate 5 APIs on the relevance of the articles retrieved and select NewsCatcher1 and Google News (Section E.2). Our initial retrieval provides wide covera...
Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: AI #54: Clauding Along, published by Zvi on March 8, 2024 on LessWrong. The big news this week was of course the release of Claude 3.0 Opus, likely in some ways the best available model right now. Anthropic now has a highly impressive model, impressive enough that it seems as if it breaks at least the spirit of their past commitments on how far they will push the frontier. We will learn more about its ultimate full capabilities over time. We also got quite the conversation about big questions of one's role in events, which I immortalized as Read the Roon. Since publication Roon has responded, which I have edited into the post along with some additional notes. That still leaves plenty of fun for the full roundup. We have spies. We have accusations of covert racism. We have Elon Musk suing OpenAI. We have a new summary of simulator theory. We have NIST, tasked with AI regulation, literally struggling to keep a roof over their head. And more. Table of Contents Introduction. Table of Contents. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Predict the future. Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility. Provide basic info. LLMs: How Do They Work? Emmett Shear rederives simulators, summarizes. Copyright Confrontation. China finds a copyright violation. Curious. Oh Elon. He sues OpenAI to… force it to change its name? Kind of, yeah. DNA Is All You Need. Was I not sufficiently impressed with Evo last week? GPT-4 Real This Time. A question of intelligence. Fun With Image Generation. Be careful not to have too much fun. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. This will not give you a hand. They Took Our Jobs. They gave us a few back. For now, at least. Get Involved. Davidad will have direct report, it could be you. Introducing. An AI-based RPG will never work, until one does. In Other AI News. The fallout continues, also other stuff. More on Self-Awareness. Not the main thing to worry about. Racism Remains a Problem for LLMs. Covert is a generous word for this. Project Maven. Yes, we are putting the AIs in charge of weapon targeting. Quiet Speculations. Claimed portents of various forms of doom. The Quest for Sane Regulation. NIST might need a little help. The Week in Audio. Sergey Brin Q&A. Rhetorical Innovation. It is not progress. We still keep trying. Another Open Letter. Also not really progress. We still keep trying. Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult. Recent roundup. Security is Also Difficult. This too is not so covert, it turns out. The Lighter Side. It's me, would you like a fries with that? Language Models Offer Mundane Utility Forecast almost as well, or sometimes better, than the wisdom of crowds using GPT-4? Paper says yes. Prompt they used is here. This does require an intensive process. First, we generate search queries that are used to invoke news APIs to retrieve historical articles. We initially implement a straightforward query expansion prompt (Figure 12a), instructing the model to create queries based on the question and its background. However, we find that this overlooks sub-considerations that often contribute to accurate forecasting. To achieve broader coverage, we prompt the model to decompose the forecasting question into sub-questions and use each to generate a search query (Min et al., 2019); see Figure 12b for the prompt. For instance, when forecasting election outcomes, the first approach searches directly for polling data, while the latter creates sub-questions that cover campaign finances, economic indicators, and geopolitical events. We combine both approaches for comprehensive coverage. Next, the system retrieves articles from news APIs using the LM-generated search queries. We evaluate 5 APIs on the relevance of the articles retrieved and select NewsCatcher1 and Google News (Section E.2). Our initial retrieval provides wide covera...
陳瑩 林裕豐 王瑞德 林廷輝 張禹宣 黃暐瀚 吳子嘉 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ettvamerica/message
The Apple Car project is dead, Project Maven-developed AI identified air strike targets, and did Amazon use AI to 'replicate the voices' of actors in the Road House remake? It's Wednesday February 28th and this is Engadget News. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On today's episode, the US military's mysterious project to bring modern artificial intelligence to the battlefield — told by the defense official behind it, whose job was so secretive he couldn't even tell his wife about it. Bloomberg's Katrina Manson takes host Saleha Mohsin behind the scenes for an unclassified look at Project Maven.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On today's episode, the US military's mysterious project to bring modern artificial intelligence to the battlefield — told by the defense official behind it, whose job was so secretive he couldn't even tell his wife about it. Bloomberg's Katrina Manson takes host Saleha Mohsin behind the scenes for an unclassified look at Project Maven.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chris & Daniel explore AI in national security with Lt. General Jack Shanahan (USAF, Ret.). The conversation reflects Jack's unique background as the only senior U.S. military officer responsible for standing up and leading two organizations in the United States Department of Defense (DoD) dedicated to fielding artificial intelligence capabilities: Project Maven and the DoD Joint AI Center (JAIC). Together, Jack, Daniel & Chris dive into the fascinating details of Jack's recent written testimony to the U.S. Senate's AI Insight Forum on National Security, in which he provides the U.S. government with thoughtful guidance on how to achieve the best path forward with artificial intelligence.
Chris & Daniel explore AI in national security with Lt. General Jack Shanahan (USAF, Ret.). The conversation reflects Jack's unique background as the only senior U.S. military officer responsible for standing up and leading two organizations in the United States Department of Defense (DoD) dedicated to fielding artificial intelligence capabilities: Project Maven and the DoD Joint AI Center (JAIC). Together, Jack, Daniel & Chris dive into the fascinating details of Jack's recent written testimony to the U.S. Senate's AI Insight Forum on National Security, in which he provides the U.S. government with thoughtful guidance on how to achieve the best path forward with artificial intelligence.
Laura Nolan, Principal Software Engineer at Stanza, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to offer insights on how to use SRE to avoid disastrous and lengthy production delays. Laura gives a rich history of her work with SREcon, why her approach to SRE is about first identifying the biggest fire instead of toiling with day-to-day issues, and why the lack of transparency in systems today actually hurts new engineers entering the space. Plus, Laura explains to Corey why she dedicates time to work against companies like Google who are building systems to help the government (inefficiently) select targets during wars and conflicts.About LauraLaura Nolan is a software engineer and SRE. She has contributed to several books on SRE, such as the Site Reliability Engineering book, Seeking SRE, and 97 Things Every SRE Should Know. Laura is a Principal Engineer at Stanza, where she is building software to help humans understand and control their production systems. Laura also serves as a member of the USENIX Association board of directors. In her copious spare time after that, she volunteers for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and is half-way through the MSc in Human Factors and Systems Safety at Lund University. She lives in rural Ireland in a small village full of medieval ruins.Links Referenced: Company Website: https://www.stanza.systems/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lauralifts LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-nolan-bb7429/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. My guest today is someone that I have been low-key annoying to come onto this show for years, and finally, I have managed to wear her down. Lauren Nolan is a Principal Software Engineer over at Stanza. At least that's what you're up to today, last I've heard. Is that right?Laura: That is correct. I'm working at Stanza, and I don't want to go on and on about my startup, but I'm working with Niall Murphy and Joseph Bironas and Matthew Girard and a bunch of other people who more recently joined us. We are trying to build a load management SaaS service. So, we're interested in service observability out of the box, knowing if your critical user journeys are good or bad out of the box, being able to prioritize your incoming requests by what's most critical in terms of visibility to your customers. So, an emerging space. Not in the Gartner Group Magic Circle yet, but I'm sure at some point [laugh].Corey: It is surreal to me to hear you talk about your day job because for, it feels like, the better part of a decade now, “Laura, Laura… oh, you mean USENIX Laura?” Because you are on the USENIX board of directors, and in my mind, that is what is always short-handed to what you do. It's, “Oh, right. I guess that isn't your actual full-time job.” It's weird. It's almost like seeing your teacher outside of the elementary school. You just figure that they fold themselves up in the closet there when you're not paying attention. I don't know what you do when SREcon is not in process. I assume you just sit there and wait for the next one, right?Laura: Well, no. We've run four of them in the last year, so there hasn't been very much waiting. I'm afraid. Everything got a little bit smooshed up together during the pandemic, so we've had a lot of events coming quite close together. But no, I do have a full-time day job. But the work I do with USENIX is just as a volunteer. So, I'm on the board of directors, as you say, and I'm on the steering committee for all of the global SREcon events, and typically is often served by the program committee as well. And I'm sort of there, annoying the chairs to, “Hey, do your thing on time,” very much like an elementary school teacher, as you say.Corey: I've been a big fan of USENIX for a while. One of the best interview processes I ever saw was closely aligned with evaluating candidates along with USENIX SAGE levels to figure out what level of seniority are they in different areas. And it was always viewed through the lens of in what types of consulting engagements will the candidate shine within, not the idea of, “Oh, are you good or are you crap? And spoiler, if I'm asking the question, I'm of course defaulting myself to goading you to crap.” Like the terrible bespoke artisanal job interview process that so many companies do. I love how this company had built this out, and I asked them about it, and, “Oh, yeah, it comes—that dates back to the USENIX SAGE things.” That was one of my first encounters with what USENIX actually did. And the more I learned, the more I liked. How long have you been involved with the group?Laura: A relatively short period of time. I think I first got involved with USENIX in around 2015, going to [Lisa 00:03:29] and then going on to SREcon. And it was all by accident, of course. I fell onto the SREcon program committee somehow because I was around. And then because I was still around and doing stuff, I got eventually—you know, got co-opted into chairing and onto the steering committee and so forth.And you know, it's like everything volunteer. I mean, people who stick around and do stuff tend to be kept around. But USENIX is quite important to me. We have an open access policy, which is something that I would like to see a whole lot more of, you know, we put everything right out there for free as soon as it is ready. And we are constantly plagued by people saying, “Hey, where's my SREcon video? The conference was like two weeks ago.” And we're like, “No, no, we're still processing the videos. We'll be there; they'll be there.”We've had people, like, literally offer to pay extra money to get the videos sooner, but [laugh] we're, like, we are open access. We are not keeping the videos away from you. We just aren't ready yet. So, I love the open access policy and I think what I like about it more than anything else is the fact that it's… we are staunchly non-vendor. We're non-technology specific and non-vendor.So, it's not, like, say, AWS re:Invent for example or any of the big cloud vendor conferences. You know, we are picking vendor-neutral content by quality. And as well, as anyone who's ever sponsored SREcon or any of the other events will also tell you that that does not get you a talk in the conference program. So, the content selection is completely independent, and in fact, we have a complete Chinese wall between the sponsorship organization and the content organization. So, I mean, I really like how we've done that.I think, as well, it's for a long time been one of the family of conferences that our organizations have conferences that has had the best diversity. Not perfect, but certainly better than it was, although very, very unfortunately, I see conference diversity everywhere going down after the pandemic, which is—particularly gender diversity—which is a real shame.Corey: I've been a fan of the SREcon conferences for a while before someone—presumably you; I'm not sure—screwed up before the pandemic and apparently thought they were talking about someone else, and I was invited to give a keynote at SREcon in EMEA that I co-presented with John Looney. Which was fun because he and I met in person for the first time three hours beforehand, beat together our talk, then showed up an hour beforehand, found there will be no confidence monitor, went away for the next 45 minutes and basically loaded it all into short term cash and gave a talk that we could not repeat if we had to for a million dollars, just because it was so… you're throwing the ball to your partner on stage and really hoping they're going to be able to catch it. And it worked out. It was an anger subtext translator skit for a bit, which was fun. All the things that your manager says but actually means, you know, the fun sort of approach. It was zany, ideally had some useful takeaways to it.But I loved the conference. That was one of the only SREcons that I found myself not surprised to discover was coming to town the next week because for whatever reason, there's presumably a mailing list that I'm not on somewhere where I get blindsided by, “Oh, yeah, hey, didn't you know SREcon is coming up?” There's probably a notice somewhere that I really should be paying attention to, but on the plus side, I get to be delightfully surprised every time.Laura: Indeed. And hopefully, you'll be delightfully surprised in March 2024. I believe it's the 18th to the 20th, when SREcon will be coming to town in San Francisco, where you live.Corey: So historically, in addition to, you know, the work with USENIX, which is, again, not your primary occupation most days, you spent over five years at Google, which of course means that you have strong opinions on SRE. I know that that is a bit dated, where the gag was always, it's only called SRE if it comes from the Mountain View region of California, otherwise it's just sparkling DevOps. But for the initial take of a lot of the SRE stuff was, “Here's how to work at Google.” It has progressed significantly beyond that to the point where companies who have SRE groups are no longer perceived incorrectly as, “Oh, we just want to be like Google,” or, “We hired a bunch of former Google people.”But you clearly have opinions to this. You've contributed to multiple books on SRE, you have spoken on it at length. You have enabled others to speak on it at length, which in many ways, is by far the better contribution. You can only go so far scaling yourself, but scaling other people, that has a much better multiplier on it, which feels almost like something an SRE might observe.Laura: It is indeed something an SRE might observe. And also, you know, good catch because I really felt you were implying there that you didn't like my book contributions. Oh, the shock.Corey: No. And to be clear, I meant [unintelligible 00:08:13], strictly to speaking.Laura: [laugh].Corey: Books are also a great one-to-many multiplier because it turns out, you can only shove so many people into a conference hall, but books have this ability to just carry your words beyond the room that you're in a way that video just doesn't seem to.Laura: Ah, but open access video that was published on YouTube, like, six weeks ahead [laugh]. That scales.Corey: I wish. People say they want to write a book and I think they're all lying. I think they want to have written the book. That's my philosophy on it. I do not understand people who've written a book. Like, “So, what are you going to do now?” “I'm going to write another book.” “Okay.” I'm going to smile, not take my eyes off you for a second and back away slowly because I do not understand your philosophy on that. But you've worked on multiple books with people.Laura: I actually enjoy writing. I enjoy the process of it because I always learn something when I write. In fact, I learn a lot of things when I write, and I enjoy that crafting. I will say I do not enjoy having written things because for me, any achievement once I have achieved it is completely dead. I will never think of it again, and I will think only of my excessively lengthy-to do list, so I clearly have problems here. But nevertheless. It's exactly the same with programming projects, by the way. But back to SRE we were talking about SRE. SRE is 20 now. SRE can almost drink alcohol in the US, and that is crazy.Corey: So, 2003 was the founding of it, then.Laura: Yes.Corey: Yay, I can do simple arithmetic in my head, still. I wondered how far my math skills had atrophied.Laura: Yes. Good job. Yes, apparently invented in roughly 2003. So, the—I mean, from what I understand Google's publishing of the, “20 years of SRE at Google,” they have, in the absence of an actual definite start date, they've simply picked. Ben Treynor's start date at Google as the start date of SRE.But nevertheless, [unintelligible 00:09:58] about 20 years old. So, is it all grown up? I mean, I think it's become heavily commodified. My feeling about SRE is that it's always been this—I mean, you said it earlier, like, it's about, you know, how do I scale things? How do I optimize my systems? How do I intervene in systems to solve problems to make them better, to see where we're going to be in pain and six months, and work to prevent that?That's kind of SRE work to me is, figure out where the problems are, figure out good ways to intervene and to improve. But there's a lot of SRE as bureaucracy around at the moment where people are like, “Well, we're an SRE team, so you know, you will have your SLO Golden Signals, and you will have your Production Readiness Checklists, which will be the things that we say, no matter how different your system is from what we designed this checklist for, and that's it. We're doing SRE now. It's great.” So, I think we miss a lot there.My personal way of doing SRE is very much more about thinking, not so much about the day-to-day SLO [excursion-type 00:10:56] things because—not that they're not important; they are important, but they will always be there. I always tend to spend more time thinking about how do we avoid the risk of, you know, a giant production fire that will take you down for days, or God forbid, more than days, you know? The sort of, big Roblox fire or the time that Meta nearly took down the internet in late-2021, that kind of thing. So, I think that modern SRE misses quite a lot of that. It's a little bit like… so when BP, when they had the Deepwater Horizon disaster on that very same day, they received an award for minimizing occupational safety risks in their environment. So, you know, [unintelligible 00:11:41] things like people tripping and—Corey: Must have been fun the next day. “Yeah, we're going to need that back.”Laura: [laugh] people tripping and falling, and you know, hitting themselves with a hammer, they got an award because it was so safe, they had very little of that. And then this thing goes boom.Corey: And now they've tried to pivot into an optimization award for efficiency, like, we just decided to flash fry half the sea life in the Gulf at once.Laura: Yes. Extremely efficient. So, you know, I worry that we're doing SRE a little bit like BP. We're doing it back before Deepwater Horizon.Corey: I should disclose that I started my technical career as a grumpy old Unix sysadmin—because it's not like you ever see one of those who's happy or young; didn't matter that I was 23 years old, I was grumpy and old—and I have viewed the evolution since then have going from calling myself a sysadmin to a DevOps engineer to an SRE to a platform engineer to whatever we're calling it this week, I still view it as fundamentally the same job, in the sense that the responsibility has not changed, and that is keep the site or environment up. But the tools, the processes and the techniques we apply to it have evolved. Is that accurate? Does it sound like I'm spouting nonsense? You're far closer to the SRE world than I ever was, but I'm curious to get your take on that perspective. And please feel free to tell me I'm wrong.Laura: No, no. I think you're completely right. And I think one of the ways that I think is shifted, and it's really interesting, but when you and I were, when we were young, we could see everything that was happening. We were deploying on some sort of Linux box or other sort of Unix box somewhere, most likely, and if we wanted, we could go and see the entire source code of everything that our software was running on. And kids these days, they're coming up, and they are deploying their stuff on RDS and ECS and, you know, how many layers of abstraction are sitting between them and—Corey: “I run Kubernetes. That means I don't know where it runs, and neither does anyone else.” It's great.Laura: Yeah. So, there's no transparency anymore in what's happening. So, it's very easy, you get to a point where sometimes you hit a problem, and you just can't figure it out because you do not have a way to get into that system and see what's happening. You know, even at work, we ran into a problem with Amazon-hosted Prometheus. We were like, “This will be great. We'll just do that.” And we could not get some particular type of remote write operation to work. We just could not. Okay, so we'll have to do something else.So, one of the many, many things I do when I'm not, you know, trying to run the SREcon conference or do actual work or definitely not write a book, I'm studying at Lund University at the moment. I'm doing this master's degree in human factors and system safety. And one of the things I've realized since doing that program is, in tech, we missed this whole 1980s and 1990s discipline of cognitive systems theory, cognitive systems engineering. This is what people were doing. They were like, how can people in the control room in nuclear plants and in the cockpit in the airplane, how can they get along with their systems and build a good mental model of the automation and understand what's going on?We missed all that. We came of age when safety science was asking questions like how can we stop organizational failures like Challenger and Columbia, where people are just not making the correct decisions? And that was a whole different sort of focus. So, we've missed all of this 1980s and 1990s cognitive system stuff. And there's this really interesting idea there where you can build two types of systems: you can build a prosthesis which does all your interaction with a system for you, and you can see nothing, feel nothing, do nothing, it's just this black box, or you can have an amplifier, which lets you do more stuff than you could do just by yourself, but lets you still get into the details.And we build mostly prostheses. We do not build amplifiers. We're hiding all the details; we're building these very, very opaque abstractions. And I think it's to the detriment of—I mean, it makes our life harder in a bunch of ways, but I think it also makes life really hard for systems engineers coming up because they just can't get into the systems as easily anymore unless they're running them themselves.Corey: I have to confess that I have a certain aversion to aspects of SRE, and I'm feeling echoes of it around a lot of the human factor stuff that's coming out of that Lund program. And I think I know what it is, and it's not a problem with either of those things, but rather a problem with me. I have never been a good academic. I have an eighth grade education because school is not really for me. And what I loved about being a systems administrator for years was the fact that it was like solving puzzles every day.I got to do interesting things, I got to chase down problems, and firefight all the time. And what SRE is represented is a step away from that to being more methodical, to taking on keeping the site up as a discipline rather than an occupation or a task that you're working on. And I think that a lot of the human factors stuff plays directly into it. It feels like the field is becoming a lot more academic, which is a luxury we never had, when holy crap, the site is down, we're going to go out of business if it isn't back up immediately: panic mode.Laura: I got to confess here, I have three master's degrees. Three. I have problems, like I said before. I got what you mean. You don't like when people are speaking in generalizations and sort of being all theoretical rather than looking at the actual messy details that we need to deal with to get things done, right? I know. I know what you mean, I feel it too.And I've talked about the human factors stuff and theoretical stuff a fair bit at conferences, and what I always try to do is I always try and illustrate with the details. Because I think it's very easy to get away from the actual problems and, you know, spend too much time in the models and in the theory. And I like to do both. I will confess, I like to do both. And that means that the luxury I miss out on is mostly sleep. But here we are.Corey: I am curious as far as what you've seen as far as the human factors adoption in this space because every company for a while claimed to be focused on blameless postmortems. But then there would be issues that quickly turned into a blame Steve postmortem instead. And it really feels, at least from a certain point of view, that there was a time where it seemed to be gaining traction, but that may have been a zero interest rate phenomenon, as weird as that sounds. Do you think that the idea of human factors being tied to keeping systems running in a computer sense has demonstrated staying power or are you seeing a recession? It could be I'm just looking at headlines too much.Laura: It's a good question. There's still a lot of people interested in it. There was a conference in Denver last February that was decently well attended for, you know, a first initial conference that was focusing on this issue, and this very vibrant Slack community, the LFI and the Learning from Incidents in Software community. I will say, everything is a little bit stretched at the moment in industry, as you know, with all the layoffs, and a lot of people are just… there's definitely a feeling that people want to hunker down and do the basics to make sure that they're not seen as doing useless stuff and on the line for layoffs.But the question is, is this stuff actually useful or not? I mean, I contend that it is. I contend that we can learn from failures, we can learn from what we're doing day-to-day, and we can do things better. Sometimes you don't need a lot of learning because what's the biggest problem is obvious, right [laugh]? You know, in that case, yeah, your focus should just be on solving your big obvious problem, for sure.Corey: If there was a hierarchy of needs here, on some level, okay, step one, is the building—Laura: Yes.Corey: Currently on fire? Maybe solve that before thinking about the longer-term context of what this does to corporate culture.Laura: Yes, absolutely. And I've gone into teams before where people are like, “Oh, well, you're an SRE, so obviously, you wish to immediately introduce SLOs.” And I can look around and go, “Nope. Not the biggest problem right now. Actually, I can see a bunch of things are on fire. We should fix those specific things.”I actually personally think that if you want to go in and start improving reliability in a system, the best thing to do is to start a weekly production meeting if the team doesn't have that, actually create a dedicated space and time for everyone to be able to get together, discuss what's been happening, discuss concerns and risks, and get all that stuff out in the open. I think that's very useful, and you don't need to spend however long it takes to formally sit down and start creating a bunch of SLOs. Because if you're not dealing with a perfectly spherical web service where you can just use the Golden Signals and if you start getting into any sorts of thinking about data integrity, or backups, or any sorts of asynchronous processing, these sorts of things, they need SLOs that are a lot more interesting than your standard error rate and latency. Error rate and latency gets you so far, but it's really just very cookie-cutter stuff. But people know what's wrong with their systems, by and large. They may not know everything that's wrong with their systems, but they'll know the big things, for sure. Give them space to talk about it.Corey: Speaking of bigger things and turning into the idea of these things escaping beyond pure tech, you have been doing some rather interesting work in an area that I don't see a whole lot of people that I talked to communicating about. Specifically, you're volunteering for the campaign to stop killer robots, which ten years ago would have made you sound ridiculous, and now it makes you sound like someone who is very rationally and reasonably calling an alarm on something that is on our doorstep. What are you doing over there?Laura: Well, I mean, let's be real, it sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. I mean, who would let a computer fly around to the sky and choose what to shoot at? But it turns out that there are, in fact, a bunch of people who are building systems like that. So yeah, I've been volunteering with the campaign for about the last five years, since roughly around the time that I left Google, in fact, because I got interested in that around about the time that Google was doing the Project Maven work, which was when Google said, “Hey, wouldn't it be super cool if we took all of this DoD video footage of drone video footage, and, you know, did a whole bunch of machine-learning analysis on it and figured out where people are going all the time? Maybe we could click on this house and see, like, a whole timeline of people's comings and goings and which other people they are sort of in a social network with.”So, I kind of said, “Ahh… maybe I don't want to be involved in that.” And I left Google. And I found out that there was this campaign. And this campaign was largely lawyers and disarmament experts, people of that nature—philosophers—but also a few technologists. And for me, having run computer systems for a large number of years at this point, the idea that you would want to rely on a big distributed system running over some janky network with a bunch of 18-year-old kids running it to actually make good decisions about who should be targeted in a conflict seems outrageous.And I think almost every [laugh] software operations person, or in fact, software engineer that I've spoken to, tends to feel the same way. And yet there is this big practical debate about this in international relations circles. But luckily, there has just been a resolution in the UN just in the last day or two as we record this, the first committee has, by a very large majority, voted to try and do something about this. So hopefully, we'll get some international law. The specific interventions that most of us in this field think would be good would be to limit the amount of force that autonomous weapon, or in fact, an entire set of autonomous weapons in a region would be able to wield because there's a concern that should there be some bug or problem or a sort of weird factor that triggers these systems to—Corey: It's an inevitability that there will be. Like, that is not up for debate. Of course, it's going to break in 2020, the template slide deck that AWS sent out for re:Invent speakers had a bunch of clip art, and one of them was a line art drawing of a ham with a bone in it. So, I wound up taking that image, slapping it on a t-shirt, captioning it “AWS Hambone,” and selling that as a fundraiser for 826 National.Laura: [laugh].Corey: Now, what happened next is that for a while, anyone who tweeted the phrase “AWS Hambone” would find themselves banned from Twitter for the next 12 hours due to some weird algorithmic thing where it thought that was doxxing or harassment or something. And people on the other side of the issue that you're talking about are straight face-idly suggesting that we give that algorithm [unintelligible 00:24:32] tool a gun.Laura: Or many guns. Many guns.Corey: I'm sorry, what?Laura: Absolutely.Corey: Yes, or missiles or, heck, let's build a whole bunch of them and turn them loose with no supervision, just like we do with junior developers.Laura: Exactly. Yes, so many people think this is a great idea, or at least they purport to think this is a great idea, which is not always the same thing. I mean, there's lots of different vested interests here. Some people who are proponents of this will say, well, actually, we think that this will make targeting more accurate, less civilians will actually will die as a result of this. And the question there that you have to ask is—there's a really good book called Drone by Chamayou, Grégoire Chamayou, and he says that there's actually three meanings to accuracy.So, are you hitting what you're aiming at is one of it—one thing. And that's a solved problem in military circles for quite some time. You got, you know, laser targeting, very accurate. Then the other question is, how big is the blast radius? So, that's just a matter of, you know, how big an explosion are you going to get? That's not something that autonomy can help with.The only thing that autonomy could even conceivably help with in terms of accuracy is better target selection. So, instead of selecting targets that are not valid targets, selecting more valid targets. But I don't think there's any good reason to think that computers can solve that problem. I mean, in fact, if you read stuff that military experts write on this, and I've got, you know, lots of academic handbooks on military targeting processes, they will tell you, it's very hard and there's a lot of gray areas, a lot of judgment. And that's exactly what computers are pretty bad at. Although mind you, I'm amused by your Hambone story and I want to ask if AWS Hambone is a database?Corey: Anything is a database, if you hold it wrong.Laura: [laugh].Corey: It's fun. I went through a period of time where, just for fun, I would ask people to name an AWS service and I would talk about how you could use it incorrectly as a database. And then someone mentioned, “What about AWS Neptune,” which is their graph database, which absolutely no one understands, and the answer there is, “I give up. It's impossible to use that thing as a database.” But everything else can be. Like, you know, the tagging system. Great, that has keys and values; it's a database now. Welcome aboard. And I didn't say it was a great database, but it is a free one, and it scales to a point. Have fun with it.Laura: All I'll say is this: you can put labels on anything.Corey: Exactly.Laura: We missed you at the most recent SREcon EMEA. There was a talk about Google's internal Chubby system and how people started using it as a database. And I did summon you in Slack, but you didn't show up.Corey: No. Sadly, I've gotten a bit out of the SRE space. And also, frankly, I've gotten out of the community space for a little while, when it comes to conferences. And I have a focused effort at the start of 2024 to start changing that. I am submitting CFPs left and right.My biggest fear is that a conference will accept one of these because a couple of them are aspirational. “Here's how I built the thing with generative AI,” which spoiler, I have done no such thing yet, but by God, I will by the time I get there. I have something similar around Kubernetes, which I've never used in anger, but soon will if someone accepts the right conference talk. This is how I learned Git: I shot my mouth off in a CFP, and I had four months to learn the thing. It was effective, but I wouldn't say it was the best approach.Laura: [laugh]. You shouldn't feel bad about lying about having built things in Kubernetes, and with LLMs because everyone has, right?Corey: Exactly. It'll be true enough by the time I get there. Why not? I'm not submitting for a conference next week. We're good. Yeah, Future Corey is going to hate me.Laura: Have it build you a database system.Corey: I like that. I really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you these days?Laura: Ohh, I'm sort of homeless on social media since the whole Twitter implosion, but you can still find me there. I'm @lauralifts on Twitter and I have the same tag on BlueSky, but haven't started to use it yet. Yeah, socials are hard at the moment. I'm on LinkedIn. Please feel free to follow me there if you wish to message me as well.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:28:31]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I appreciate it.Laura: Thank you for having me.Corey: Laura Nolan, Principal Software Engineer at Stanza. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry, insulting comment that soon—due to me screwing up a database system—will be transmogrified into a CFP submission for an upcoming SREcon.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business, and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.
In this episode, Brock talks with Colin Carroll. Colin is a former Marine Corps recon and intelligence officer and today works at Anduril on strategy and growth. Colin has been a part of several unique teams within and adjacent to the Department of Defense. We get into his time at Project Maven as well as the Joint AI Center to talk about building innovative teams from scratch, why people are the most important ingredient when determining success, and how those people influence the early culture of an organization. Colin also talks about some of the technical advancements AI is bringing to the battlefield and the changing state of the defense technology business in particular how people should be thinking about how to win in defense. Show Notes: Getting fired from the Joint AI Center. 0:39 Command climate surveys and morale in the Department of Defense. 3:02 Career in DoD and Project Maven 12:06 Military service, Intel, and AI development. 15:30 Autonomous systems and program design in government. 19:02 Team dynamics in the DoD. 25:34 Building and maintaining a high-performing team. 29:36 Hiring and evaluating candidates for innovative companies. 32:44 Career paths and personal growth. 39:15 Disrupting the defense industry with AI. 43:17 Government procurement and defense industry. 46:42 Tailoring government go-to-market strategies for different stages of a company's lifecycle. 50:03 Defense industry strategy. 56:28 Scaling production and command control for multidomain unmanned systems. 59:33 Defense tech gaps and data needs for autonomous systems. 1:02:15 The data problem in the DoD. 1:10:03 Tension between industry and government in defense tech. 1:13:23 DOD acquisitions challenges and cultural changes. 1:16:53 -- The Scuttlebutt Podcast - The podcast for service members and veterans building a life outside the military. The Scuttlebutt Podcast features discussions on lifestyle, careers, business, and resources for service members. Show host, Brock Briggs, talks with a special guest from the community committed to helping military members build a successful life, inside and outside the service. Follow along: • Episode & transcript: https://www.scuttlebuttpodcast.co/ • Brock: https://www.brockbriggs.com/
Google -- or, more properly, Alphabet -- is a huge company, and is at the bleeding edge of numerous technological innovations. So, while it wasn't necessarily a surprise that Uncle Sam wanted Google's help building AI, it certainly disturbed a great many people, some of whom were Google's own engineers. So what exactly happened? Join Ben and Matt as they dive into the strange story of Project Maven in this classic episode.They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
As the birthplace of semiconductors and computers, Silicon Valley has historically been a major center of the defense industry. That changed with the Vietnam War, when antiwar protesters burned down computing centers at multiple universities to oppose the effort in Southeast Asia, as well as the rise of countercultural entrepreneurs who largely determined the direction of the internet age. Today, there are once again growing ties between tech companies and the Pentagon as the need for more sophisticated AI tools for defense becomes paramount. But as controversies like Google's launch of Project Maven attest, there remains a wide chasm of distrust between many software engineers and the Pentagon's goals for a robust defense of the American homeland. In this episode of “Securities”, host Danny Crichton and Lux founder and managing partner Josh Wolfe sit down with retired lieutenant general Jack Shanahan to talk about rebuilding the trust needed between these two sides. Before retirement, Shanahan was the inaugural director of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, a hub for connecting frontier AI tech into all aspects of the Defense Department's operations. We talk about the case of Project Maven and its longer-term implications, the ethical issues that lie at the heart of AI technologies in war and defense, as well as some of the lessons learned from Russia's invasion of Ukraine the past year.
How is the DoD thinking about deploying AI? What are the challenges and opportunities involved in building out AI assurance? To discuss, I brought on Dr. Jane Pinelis, Chief AI Engineer The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She was previously the Chief of the Test, Evaluation, and Assessment branch at the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). Prior to joining the JAIC, Dr. Pinelis served as the Director of Test and Evaluation for USDI's Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, better known as Project Maven. Cohosting is Karson Elmgren of CSET. Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgzGwKwLmgM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How is the DoD thinking about deploying AI? What are the challenges and opportunities involved in building out AI assurance? To discuss, I brought on Dr. Jane Pinelis, Chief AI Engineer The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She was previously the Chief of the Test, Evaluation, and Assessment branch at the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). Prior to joining the JAIC, Dr. Pinelis served as the Director of Test and Evaluation for USDI's Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, better known as Project Maven. Cohosting is Karson Elmgren of CSET. Outtro music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgzGwKwLmgM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Virgin Galactic returns to space. Space Force is partnering with the Air Force on offensive space cyber operations. South Korea delivers its first commercial grade satellite into orbit, and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence roundup, Signals and Space, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow T-Minus on Twitter and LinkedIn. T-Minus Guest Our featured interview today is with Jon Check, Executive Director of Cyber Protection Solutions at Raytheon Intelligence and Space. He joins us to discuss Raytheon's support for the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. You can follow Jon on LinkedIn and Twitter. Selected Reading VIRGIN GALACTIC COMPLETES SUCCESSFUL SPACEFLIGHT- Virgin Galactic 5.24 Schriever Spacepower Series: Lt Gen Stephen N. Whiting - Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Unified and integrated: How Space Force envisions the future of data-sharing for space operations - Breaking Defense NGA making 'significant advances' months into AI-focused Project Maven takeover - Breaking Defense National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to demo data processing node- C4ISRNET (5th LD) S. Korea launches space rocket Nuri following delay - Yonhap News Agency Fleet Space raises A$50M Series C to globalise revolutionary critical minerals exploration tech- Fleet PR Dish in Talks to Sell Wireless Plans Through Amazon - WSJ Does the roar of rocket launches harm wildlife? These scientists seek answers- Nature ESA receives Space for Climate Protection Award- ESA LEGO sends 1,000 astronauts to space and lands them safely in a mini space-shuttle- Space.com Audience Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © 2023 N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week, A'ndre chats with Colin Carroll, the Head of Applied Intuition's Government Relations team, and a vocal expert on leveraging autonomous systems in defense. We break down Colin's perspectives on how the Defense Department has leveraged autonomous systems in the past and present, and Colin outlines what he sees as the biggest blockers for rapid and efficient development in and out of the Department. Colin discusses his early career experience at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center and Project Maven, his thoughts on whether autonomy development is siloed across the branches of the Armed Forces, and if autonomy, artificial intelligence, and machine learning tools are shaping operations/strategy in Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific. Colin provides his commentary on how the Defense Department can better leverage the private sector, and also plugs Applied Intuition's upcoming event, Nexus 23.
I was pleased to have Colin Carroll join me on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss the acquisition of machine learning in the Department of Defense. He is the Director of Government Relations at Applied Intuition, a company that enables autonomous vehicles through simulation development and validation. Before that, Colin had a number of positions including Chief Operating Officer at the JAIC, mission Integration Lead for Project Maven, and 10 years of active service in the Marine Corps. 2:30 -Project Maven started with Bob Work and 10 slides 6:30 - Everyone in the Pentagon's in the fight 10:30 - There's not yet an urgency like in 2009 with MRAP 12:30 - How JAIC operations differed from Project Maven 15:00 - DoD autonomy programs often have zero data 17:00 - How to structure AI/ML programs in DoD 19:00 - The Joint Common Foundations is no more 24:40 - Most DoD's data is owned by industry 27:00 - DoD is buying brittle AI/ML models 29:00 - Competing with GOTS software 31:00 - Separating HW acquisition from SW 37:00 - DoD's $2B AI/ML spending estimate likely high 42:00 - We don't win by reforming SBIR 59:20 - The buzzword of JADC2 1:05:16 - The idea behind Title 10 failed 1:09:50 - Force Design 2030 and the future fight 1:20:10 - How to build a defense team at a tech company This podcast was produced by Eric Lofgren. You can follow me on Twitter @AcqTalk and find more information at https://AcquisitionTalk.com
This episode examines how special operations forces are integrating high-tech tools like artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize their operations. Dr. Richard Shultz of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Gen. Richard Clarke, commander of US Special Operations Command, join the podcast to trace the history of US special operations forces' efforts in Iraq to adapt to the counterterrorism fight there, explain how these forces made use of data to enable a remarkably rapid operational tempo, and describe how a program called Project Maven took shape to harness new technological capabilities.
On Today's Show:"There will always be incidents to respond to though. And that's part of this mindset too, is that you're assuming breach much like in zero trust. You're awaiting it, but you already have mechanisms in place to help you in that situation" - Meghan GoodAs cyber threats continue to evolve, security is more important than ever. It is no longer effective to just meet basic requirements. In today's world, security needs to be proactive. It needs to look ahead and predict the future threats it may need to fend off. That's exactly what the Beyond Compliance approach is, and why it's such a game changer. Meghan Good is VP and Director of the Cyber Accelerator at Leidos. Today, she joins to explain what Beyond Compliance means, how it works, and the best way for organizations to begin with this modern-day approach to cybersecurity.Key TakeawaysHow to think Beyond ComplianceOvercoming the challenges involved in always looking aheadWhy collective defence is the way forwardLinkswww.leidos.com/cyber
In episode 35 of The Gradient Podcast, guest host Sharon Zhou speaks to Jack Shanahan.John (Jack) Shanahan was a Lieutenant General in the United States Air Force, retired after a 36-year military career. He was the inaugural Director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). He was also the Director of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (Project Maven). Currently, he is a Special Government Employee supporting the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence; serves on the Board of Advisors for the Common Mission Project; is an advisor to The Changing Character of War Centre (Oxford University); is a member of the CACI Strategic Advisory Group; and serves as an Advisor to the Military Cyber Professionals Association.Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on TwitterOutline:(00:00) Intro(01:20) Introduction to Jack and Sharon(07:30) Project Maven(09:45) Relationship of Tech Sector and DoD(16:40) Need for AI in DoD(20:10) Bringing the tech-DoD divide(30:00) ConclusionEpisode Links:John N.T. Shanahan WikipediaAI To Revolutionize U.S. Intelligence Community With General ShanahanEmail: aidodconversations@gmail.com Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe
On Today's Show:"If you can get the trust relationship right, when humans and machines actually work together to solve problems you can really transform the way that business is done. If you build that relationship with intention based on trust, then humans actually really like working with AI-enabled capabilities traditionally." - Ron KeesingSome of our best work in technology comes when humans and machines work together. That also applies to AI-enabled tech. But to see those rewards, like any relationship, trust needs to be present, and that means it needs to be built. Building that trust is a task the team at Leidos is heavily focused on. Today, Ron Keesing, Senior VP for technology integration at Leidos and Tifani O'Brien, Lead for the AI and Machine Learning Accelerator at Leidos join us to walk us through how they're doing that and the challenges they face.Key TakeawaysHow trust in AI impacts the application of the technologyMethods for evoking trust in AIHow AI can help humans unlearn biasesLinkswww.leidos.com/ai
Where should tech builders draw the line on AI for military or surveillance? Just because it can be built, doesn't mean it should be. At what point do we blow the whistle, call out the boss, and tell the world? Find out what it's like to sound the alarm from inside a big tech company.Laura Nolan shares the story behind her decision to leave Google in 2018 over their involvement in Project Maven, a Pentagon project which used AI by Google.Yves Moreau explains why he is calling on academic journals and international publishers to retract papers that use facial recognition and DNA profiling of minority groups.Yeshimabeit Milner describes how the non-profit Data for Black Lives is pushing back against use of AI powered tools used to surveil and criminalize Black and Brown communities.Shmyla Khan, describes being on the receiving end of technologies developed by foreign superpowers as a researcher with the Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan.IRL is an original podcast from Mozilla, the non-profit behind Firefox. In Season 6, host Bridget Todd shares stories of people who make AI more trustworthy in real life. This season doubles as Mozilla's 2022 Internet Health Report. Go to the report for show notes, transcripts, and more.
Andy and Dave discuss the latest in AI news and search, including a report from the Government Accountability Office, recommending that the Department of Defense should improve its AI strategies and other AI-related guidance [1:25]. Another GAO report finds that the Navy should improve its approach to uncrewed maritime systems, particularly in its lack of accounting for the full costs to develop and operate such systems, but also recommends the Navy establish an “entity” with oversight for the portfolio [4:01]. The Army is set to launch a swarm of 30 small drones during the 2022 Experimental Demonstration Gateway Exercise (EDGE 22), which will be the largest group of air-launched effects the Army has tested [5:55]. DoD announces its new Chief Digital and AI Officer, Dr. Craig Martell, former head of machine learning for Lyft, and the Naval Postgraduate School [7:47]. And the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) takes over operational control of Project Maven's GEOINT AI services [9:55]. Researchers from Princeton and the University of Chicago create a deep learning model of “superficial face judgments,” that is, how humans judge impressions of what people are like, based on their faces; the researchers note that their dataset deliberately reflects bias [12:05]. And researchers from MIT, Cornell, Google, and Microsoft present a new method for completely unsupervised label assignments to images, with STEGO (self-supervised transformer with energy-based graph optimization), allowing the algorithm to find consistent groupings of labels in a largely automated fashion [18:35]. And elicit.org provides a “research discovery” tool, leveraging GPT-3 to provide insights and ideas to research topics [24:24]. Careers: https://us61e2.dayforcehcm.com/CandidatePortal/en-US/CNA/Posting/View/1624
Photo: A stand-alone exhibit entitled, “Innovations in Defense: Artificial Intelligence and the Challenge of Cybersecurity,” features Pittsburgh-based team ForAllSecure's Mayhem Cyber Reasoning System. The system took first place at the August 2016 Cyber Grand Challenge finals, beating out six other computers. The Mayhem CRS was put on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The exhibit was produced by the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. DoD photo What is Project Maven? Francis Rose, @FrancisRoseDC @FedScoop, host, Government Matters (Washington, D.C.); NationalDefenseWeek.com and francisrose.com; The Daily Scoop, The Fed Scoop podcast https://www.fedscoop.com/radio/project-maven-is-moving-improving-how-citizens-interact-with-government-what-the-army-gains-from-cloud%EF%BF%BC/
On today's episode of The Daily Scoop Podcast, the Department of Energy launches the Artificial Intelligence Advancement Council to coordinate funding and development of algorithms. The latest update of the president's management agenda includes five life experiences the Office of Management and Budget believes the government can improve on. Suzette Kent, CEO at Kent Advisory Services and former federal chief information officer, discusses OMB's approach to how citizens interact with government. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency will take over Project Maven over the course of this fiscal year. Rear Admiral Danelle Barrett (USN, ret.), former deputy chief information officer of the Navy and former director of current operations at U.S. Cyber Command, explains the importance of the program and what a success transition would look like. The Army is about seven years into its cloud journey now. Colten O'Malley, deputy commander of U.S. Army Command & Control Support Agency, tells FedScoop's Billy Mitchell how important cloud has been to the service. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.
The Pentagon's marquee artificial intelligence initiative, known as Project Maven, is moving to a new home. It's leaving the Office of the Secretary of Defense. For where it's headed, turn to Federal News Network's Justin Doubleday reporting from the GEOINT conference in Denver.
On today's episode of The Daily Scoop Podcast, the fifth generation of a key military cyber training program is under development. The Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) operation will get a new leader at the Department of Defense, Lt. Gen. Mary O'Brien. Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan (USAF-ret.), former director of DOD's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) and former leader of Project Maven, discusses the role of the JADC2 leader in coordinating all the pieces of the operation across the department. Okta Federal Chief Security Officer Sean Frazier discusses how organizations need to keep their cybersecurity posture flexible and agile even as employees begin returning to the office. This interview is underwritten by Okta. Rear Adm. Michael Ryan, commander of Coast Guard Cyber Command, discusses the threat landscape facing USCG today, explains how they are reducing cyber risk and outlines the three lines of effort in the Coast Guard Cyber Strategic Outlook. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.
Amina joins us to discuss her journey at Google, working on Project Maven. Interview with Amina Al Sherif, Chief Innovation Officer at Anno.Ai. Follow her on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/34prFVQor Twitter: https://bit.ly/3sbMEUF This episode is brought to you by EthicsGrade, an ESG Ratings agency with a particular focus on Technology Governance, especially AI Ethics. You can find more information about EthicsGrade here: https://www.ethicsgrade.io/ You can also follow EthicsGrade on Twitter (@EthicsGrade) and LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2JCiQOg Connect with Us: Join our Slack channel for more conversation about the big ethics issues that rise from AI: https://bit.ly/3jVdNov Follow Are You A Robot? on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook: @AreYouARobotPod Follow our LinkedIn page: https://bit.ly/3gqzbSw Check out our website: https://www.areyouarobot.co.uk/ Resources: Amina's blog: https://bit.ly/3gggEJm AYAR? episode “Killer Robots” with Wanda and Richard: https://bit.ly/3gc9Z2X
Google has entered the ring alongside Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle to bid for Department of Defense's Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract. You may remember back in 2018 when Google employees protested Project Maven, a Google DoD AI project that among other things sought to increase the accuracy of drone strikes. Google did not renew that contract but now they are back in earnest. Good. China and Russia seek to destroy us and the rules based global order that has lead to the most progress in the history of humanity. We need our best companies and smartest minds on this. Would love to hear from you. Rate, comment, subscribe on Apple Podcasts and for the video edition- YouTube. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok where I always post when a new show drops.
On today's episode of The Daily Scoop Podcast, the Office of Management and Budget is looking to hire a federal chief statistician, a position that has been vacant for almost two years. Steven Grundman, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council, discusses how the defense industry should be evaluating their solutions to better fit problems the Department of Defense is trying to solve. Lt. Gen Jack Shanahan (USAF-ret.), former Director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), Department of Defense, explains the significance of speed in artificial intelligence projects at the Pentagon and lessons learned from his experiences at the JAIC and standing up Project Maven. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.
A 1960 Tape of a Government Cover-up. Listen to This! Do you really trust them with your life? Also, what is Project Maven and why is the Pentagon and Google partnering on it? WHY do I feel that AI is the wrong way to go? A Google Whistleblower Spills the Beans!
Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, is something like Q for the Defense Department. He formerly ran the Strategic Capabilities Office, a secretive military skunkworks designed to figure out how to fight future wars. While there, he helped design swarms of tiny unmanned drones; he helped create Project Maven; and he tried to partner the Defense Department with the videogame industry.
Silicon Valley is in the middle of an awakening, the dawning but selective realization that their products can be used to achieve terrible ends. In the past few months, this growing unease has bubbled up into outright rebellion from within the rank and file of some of the largest companies in the Valley, beginning in April when Google employees balked at the company's involvement with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program called Project Maven.
With Google ending its involvement in Project Maven after significant employee dissent about the company working with the military we ponder what exactly should AI be used for and perhaps more importantly what it shouldn't be used for. Starring Tom Merritt, Shannon Morse, Len Peralta and Roger ChangMP3Using a Screen Reader? Click hereMultiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.Subscribe through Apple Podcasts.Follow us on Soundcloud.A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!Thanks to Anthony Lemos of Ritual Misery for the expanded show notes!Thanks to our mods, Kylde, Jack_Shid, KAPT_Kipper, and scottierowland on the subredditShow NotesTo read the show notes in a separate page click here! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/dtns.
The backlash to Google's work on a US military artificial-intelligence project began inside the tech giant, but in recent weeks, it has spilled into the public. As employees resigned in protest over Google's work with Project Maven, which uses AI to identify potential drone targets in satellite images, reports revealed top executives fretting over how it will be perceived by the public.
The LAVA Flow | Libertarian | Anarcho-capitalist | Voluntaryist | Agorist
Seasteading has made some bold moves by signing an agreement with French Polynesia, and they have a pretty aggressive timeline. You don't want to miss hearing about this. What's in the News with stories on everyone gets a trophy, forced solar panels, cop sex illegal, sports gambling, and Google employees protesting. Finally, and Ask Me Anything segment with questions on breaking laws to defend yourself, pollution in a voluntaryist society, and drug war intellectual honesty. This episode is brought to you by ZenCash, a cryptocurrency that infuses privacy, anonymity, and security done right. Also brought to you by NordVPN, the fastest, easiest to use service to protect your online presence that I've ever seen. WHAT'S RUSTLING MY JIMMIES If you've listened to this show for any amount of time, you know I'm fascinated by projects that are happening to bring more freedom to people. Some of the best chances, as far as I can tell, are those that separate and congregate hose who believe in freedom. Clearly, at this point in my life, I believe that the Free State Project is the best such project out there, but there are many others that could give it a run for its money in the future. Whether it be Liberland, Free Society, seasteading, and more. But, one one of these came across my news desk a few days ago from CNBC that deserves a really close look if for no other reason that it has more legs than the rest. A floating Pacific island is in the works with its own government, cryptocurrency, and 300 houses. WHAT'S IN THE NEWS In everyone gets a trophy news, a New Jersey high school is taking a new approach to cheerleading tryouts, and not all parents and cheerleaders are fans of the new policy. Under the new rules, everyone makes the squad or no one does. In solar or else news, a state board in California has approved a proposal to require solar panels on all new homes beginning in 2020, a measure that would increase the cost of new construction but provide savings on utilities — and help the state meet ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In woe was me news, a new Kansas law makes it a crime for police to have sex with people they pull over for traffic violations or detain in criminal investigations. In one small step news, the United States Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibits sports gambling in a landmark decision that gives states the go-ahead to legalize betting on sports. In some folks still have integrity news, around a dozen Google employees have quit over the company's involvement in an artificial intelligence drone program for the Pentagon called Project Maven, Gizmodo reported. ASK ME ANYTHING It's that time again, where I answer your burning questions!
At Google's campus in Mountain View, California, executives are trying to assuage thousands of employees protesting a contract with the Pentagon's flagship artificial-intelligence initiative, Project Maven. Thousands of miles away, algorithms trained under Project Maven—which includes companies other than Google—are helping war fighters identify potential ISIS targets in video from drones.
For months, a growing faction of Google employees has tried to force the company to drop out of a controversial military program called Project Maven. More than 4,000 employees, including dozens of senior engineers, have signed a petition asking Google to cancel the contract. Last week, Gizmodo reported that a dozen employees resigned over the project. “There are a bunch more waiting for job offers (like me) before we do so,” one engineer says.
This week we talk about androids, drones, and Project Maven.We also discuss lethal autonomous weapons, the Terminator, and cyberwarfare. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe
On this week's If Then, Will Oremus and April Glaser talk about about an unexpected move by President Trump that could save the Chinese electronics maker ZTE. Also in the news is Project Maven, a Pentagon project to build AI for drones, which Google has been working on. This week it was reported that around a dozen Google employees quit over the company's involvement in the project.The hosts discuss what one Apple blogger calls “one of the biggest design screwups in Apple history,” which has led to a class-action lawsuit. And they break down a major vulnerability in email encryption. Later, April and Will are joined by antitrust expert Gene Kimmelman. He's the president and CEO of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit that focuses on tech policy research and advocacy. He formerly served as the Chief Counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division under President Obama, during which time the NBC/Comcast merger was approved. They talk to him about AT&T's antitrust trial with the DOJ as the company attempts to acquire Time Warner for $85 billion. If approved, that deal could reshape the future of how people connect to the internet, how they get their news and entertainment, and the future of mega-mergers proposed under Trump. And then there's the recent revelation that AT&T hired Trump attorney Michael Cohen as a consultant last year. Don't Close My TabsThe Guardian: Black Activist Jailed for His Facebook Posts Speaks Out About Secret FBI SurveillanceThe Verge: UK Newsstands Will Sell “Porn Passes” to verify Ages Under New LawsThe Telegraph: Newsagents and Corner Shops To Sell “Porn Pass” Access Codes To Allow Adults To Visit X-rated SitesPodcast production by Max Jacobs.If Then plugs: You can get updates about what's coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
If Then | News on technology, Silicon Valley, politics, and tech policy
On this week's If Then, Will Oremus and April Glaser talk about about an unexpected move by President Trump that could save the Chinese electronics maker ZTE. Also in the news is Project Maven, a Pentagon project to build AI for drones, which Google has been working on. This week it was reported that around a dozen Google employees quit over the company's involvement in the project.The hosts discuss what one Apple blogger calls “one of the biggest design screwups in Apple history,” which has led to a class-action lawsuit. And they break down a major vulnerability in email encryption. Later, April and Will are joined by antitrust expert Gene Kimmelman. He's the president and CEO of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit that focuses on tech policy research and advocacy. He formerly served as the Chief Counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division under President Obama, during which time the NBC/Comcast merger was approved. They talk to him about AT&T's antitrust trial with the DOJ as the company attempts to acquire Time Warner for $85 billion. If approved, that deal could reshape the future of how people connect to the internet, how they get their news and entertainment, and the future of mega-mergers proposed under Trump. And then there's the recent revelation that AT&T hired Trump attorney Michael Cohen as a consultant last year. Don't Close My TabsThe Guardian: Black Activist Jailed for His Facebook Posts Speaks Out About Secret FBI SurveillanceThe Verge: UK Newsstands Will Sell “Porn Passes” to verify Ages Under New LawsThe Telegraph: Newsagents and Corner Shops To Sell “Porn Pass” Access Codes To Allow Adults To Visit X-rated SitesPodcast production by Max Jacobs.If Then plugs: You can get updates about what's coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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