Best of LinkedIn: ICT & Tech Insights CW 43/ 44

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier in Freeness based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about ICT and tech insights from CW- for three and forty four.

00:00:09: Freenes supports ICT enterprises, in the form of delivery precise ICT market and pricing intelligence that analysts subscriptions an existing databases cannot provide.

00:00:18: you can find more info into description.

00:00:21: so um i want to imagine something first.

00:00:23: second okay

00:00:24: with

00:00:25: Imagine someone steals a massive, incredibly heavy steel bank vault like today.

00:00:31: They drag it into their backyard and just bury in the dirt.

00:00:34: Like just buried in the yard?

00:00:35: Exactly!

00:00:36: And they don't have the key-they literally no way to open right now.

00:00:39: but... ...they know for an absolute fact that in say exactly six years A machine will be invented That can magically vaporize that vault

00:00:48: tour.

00:00:48: Oh wow okay so they are waiting out.

00:00:52: Yeah, and that is exactly what state-sponsored hackers are doing right now with our most sensitive encrypted digital data.

00:00:58: It's just a really chilling reality when you put it like that... ...and it perfectly encapsulates this huge shift we're seeing right now!

00:01:08: Welcome to the deep dive.

00:01:09: everyone For you listening, whether you are mapping out digital transformation strategies or your leading tech operations.

00:01:17: The foundational logic of how we build secure and even physically power our technology is basically be rewritten all

00:01:22: at once?

00:01:23: Yeah it's all happening simultaneously.

00:01:26: Exactly so that is our mission today.

00:01:28: We're going to cut through the noise And explore how three massive forces are colliding.

00:01:33: We've got AI accelerated threats Quantum computing advancements the absolute physical limits of our hardware.

00:01:40: Which is forcing a complete overhaul of enterprise security and resilience?

00:01:44: Right, because I mean we really are past the era of the clean binary diagnostic.

00:01:49: We used to have this system where a vulnerability scan flashed red A human patched it And boom!

00:01:54: The system was secure.

00:01:55: Right...the

00:01:55: classic find-and-patch.

00:01:57: Yeah But AI Is completely dismantling that timeline.

00:02:01: We're moving away from traditional vulnerability management Toward what industry's now calling exposure management.

00:02:08: Okay, let's unpack this shift because the scale of it feels kind of overwhelming.

00:02:12: What exactly is AI doing differently than human attackers here?

00:02:15: Well It really comes down to identifying patterns that are just you know invisible to the human eye People.

00:02:21: Sina made a brilliant point about this recently.

00:02:23: Oh yeah I saw that.

00:02:24: Yeah He noted that AI is now creating what he calls toxic combinations.

00:02:29: So historically A lot of lower priority bugs say like a priority three or priority four bug.

00:02:35: They were just left in the backlog

00:02:37: Because they We're just too much trouble to figure out.

00:02:39: Basically, yeah they were ignored because they were too convoluted for a human attacker To figure how actually weaponize them.

00:02:45: right

00:02:46: but AI models They can map out thousands of attack paths in literally seconds.

00:02:51: So there are chaining these seemingly harmless low priority bugs together to create massive Priority zero crises.

00:02:58: so if I can try an analogy here It's sort of like a thief walking up to a bank and realizing they don't actually need to blow-up the heavy front door.

00:03:08: Yes, exactly

00:03:09: They just realize oh The bathroom window is cracked...the hallway door has a loose hinge And the vault was left on a factory default code.

00:03:16: Right

00:03:17: None those things matter

00:03:17: On their own But chained together in the exact right sequence ...The Bank Just gets rubbed.

00:03:23: That Is Precisely it!

00:03:24: And the speed at which these AI models find those loose hinges is just staggering.

00:03:29: Steve Vince shared some data that really puts this into perspective.

00:03:32: Okay, what were the numbers?

00:03:33: So over the last twenty-six years.

00:03:35: The cybersecurity industry accumulated roughly three hundred thousand common vulnerabilities and exposures or CVEs.

00:03:43: Wait!

00:03:43: Three hundred thousand over two and a half decades Right.

00:03:47: But this year alone we saw fifty eight thousand new CVE's.

00:03:51: You're kidding

00:03:52: Now...and twelve thousand of those We are in month August alone.

00:03:56: Oh my

00:03:56: god.

00:03:56: Yeah

00:03:57: The timeline from a vulnerability being discovered to a weaponized exploit being deployed in the wild.

00:04:03: it is shrinking for months down two hours.

00:04:06: So human driven patching cycles which are usually measured and weeks.

00:04:09: They're entirely obsolete now

00:04:11: completely.

00:04:12: And let's talk about what that looks like in the world.

00:04:15: I know there was a lot of chatter about the PHP-II shell folder abilities recently.

00:04:18: Oh,

00:04:19: yeah Sanjay Poonan highlighted this as just a massive exposure event.

00:04:24: To really understand the gravity of it, you have to realize that PHP as a scripting language powers roughly seventy percent of the web.

00:04:32: Seventy percent?

00:04:33: That's wild!

00:04:34: Right?!

00:04:35: And these specific flaws?

00:04:36: they allow for unauthenticated remote code execution at the actual PHP runtime level...

00:04:41: Okay can he translate that first?

00:04:42: second?

00:04:43: Unauthenticated Remote Code Execution.

00:04:45: what does that physically allow an attacker do?

00:04:48: Basically, it means an attacker does not need a username.

00:04:51: They don't need a password and they don't to trick the user into clipping up phishing

00:04:54: link.

00:04:55: Wow!

00:04:56: Really?

00:04:56: Yeah...they

00:04:57: can simply send a malicious command directly on the server's core engine And the server will just run it.

00:05:02: That is terrifying.

00:05:04: It gets worse because this flaw in PHP runtime itself.

00:05:07: Your standard defenses are totally useless.

00:05:10: So like updating plugins won't do anything

00:05:12: Exactly.

00:05:12: Updating your WordPress plugins won't fix it, tweaking your firewall rules won't block It.

00:05:16: the only fix is entirely replacing and patching The underlying PHP engine itself.

00:05:22: But there are millions of legacy systems out There running end-of-life software branches that will simply never get a patch

00:05:28: Precisely.

00:05:29: they're just sitting ducks.

00:05:30: So wait if the volume of attacks is spiking this much And our traditional firewalls can stop these core vulnerabilities Is the whole security product market?

00:05:40: Just I don't know failing.

00:05:42: I mean it's definitely being put to the ultimate stress test.

00:05:45: Shreya Shekhar pointed out that when you are dealing with AI agent attacks at scale, The sheer math of all just changes.

00:05:52: How so?

00:05:53: Well in a human constrained attack world A security tool With a ninety six percent Attack prevention rate versus one with a ninety nine percent Rate It might not have seemed drastically different.

00:06:04: Sure its just a few percentage points

00:06:06: Right, but when AI agents are throwing thousands of attacks a minute at your perimeter that three percent gap in efficacy is magnified enormously.

00:06:14: Oh I see it becomes a massive volume of successful breaches.

00:06:18: Exactly!

00:06:19: It becomes the difference between a normal Tuesday and a catastrophic breach.

00:06:23: product efficacy rather than marketing hype Is basically The only metric That matters now.

00:06:28: Okay so if we can't patch our way out Of this ai speed And We know Breaches Are Gonna happen way faster than humans can react.

00:06:36: It feels like the only logical fallback is assuming The Breach will be

00:06:40: successful.".

00:06:41: Yeah, that's the uncomfortable truth

00:06:43: which means the entire conversation has to shift right from how do we prevent everything?

00:06:48: To what are we allowed to let die and what absolutely must live

00:06:53: exactly?

00:06:54: And that introduces a concept Tim Reigns brought up called resilience economics.

00:06:57: resilience

00:06:58: economics

00:06:59: yeah.

00:06:59: he points out that for almost Every organization, even massive enterprises achieving full one hundred percent resilience is completely unaffordable.

00:07:08: It's just too expensive

00:07:09: way to expensive.

00:07:09: you cannot maintain real-time recovery immutable backups and fully isolated identities for every single application in your digital estate.

00:07:18: it would literally bankrupt the IT department.

00:07:21: so You're forced to just brutally prioritize what must survive?

00:07:25: For the entity to continue existing.

00:07:27: precisely

00:07:28: So what does that extreme end of prioritization actually look like in practice?

00:07:32: Well, Nicholas Friedman highlighted the Pentagon's Fortress America plan which is a perfect example of this extreme.

00:07:38: Okay What is fortress america?

00:07:40: The US military is operating under the assumption That A massive cyber attack could Actually take down the national power grid.

00:07:46: so they have mandated that every major u.s Military installation must be able to generate ninety days Of independent power

00:07:54: like ninety days

00:07:55: ninety days.

00:07:56: let's not just like a backup generator kicking on for a weekend.

00:07:58: That is a massive, operational and logistical undertaking.

00:08:02: Oh

00:08:02: absolutely

00:08:02: You're talking about fuel supply chains water cooling everything needed to run command centers an aircraft without a single watt from the civilian grid.

00:08:12: It isn't completely self-sustaining micro economy For a quarter of year.

00:08:16: that it's insane.

00:08:17: And Caitlyn S. noted an incredibly stark contrast to this, the UK government recently encouraged its civilian households to prepare and emergency kit to survive for just three days without essential

00:08:27: services.".

00:08:28: Wow!

00:08:29: So civilians are told to prepare for seventy-two hours while the military is preparing over two thousand hours?

00:08:36: Yeah it really highlights that vast spectrum of resilience planning.

00:08:40: But those civilian essential services I mean they're actively under threat right now aren't?

00:08:45: Dr.

00:08:45: Billiana Lilly pointed out that back in July, the FBI and EPA actually had to issue warnings about attackers specifically targeting US water and wastewater utilities.

00:08:55: Wait hold on.

00:08:56: how are hackers reaching the water supply?

00:08:58: That sounds like a movie plot.

00:08:59: It

00:08:59: does but they are exploiting internet-facing operational technology.

00:09:05: Specifically there were targeting these things called Alan Bradley controllers.

00:09:09: What did those?

00:09:10: They're physical industrial computers.

00:09:12: literally control valves & pumps In the Water Facilities To make them easier to monitor remotely, facilities just connected them to the internet.

00:09:20: Oh no.

00:09:20: Yeah!

00:09:21: Hackers found them bypassed security and incidents were reported across at least seven states.

00:09:27: So we are talking about physical infrastructure that treats actual water coming out of your tap.

00:09:32: Exactly

00:09:33: And... We're seeing this same physical digital collision in healthcare too.

00:09:38: I was reading what Daniel Crocey posted about Project Lifeline Two-Fifty

00:09:42: The hospital initiative.

00:09:44: It's a pilot program between the White House and the state of South Carolina to specifically harden the networks of rural hospitals.

00:09:51: And Inga Sturbite laid out six priorities for hospital cyber resilience that just complimented perfectly.

00:09:57: her core argument is, That for a Hospital IT Resilience isn't about the server staying online right.

00:10:02: it's about patient safety

00:10:03: exactly entirely about patient safety.

00:10:06: If the digital charting system goes down, can the nurses still administer the correct medication dosages?

00:10:12: Can the emergency room keep triaging trauma patients on

00:10:14: paper?".

00:10:14: Yes!

00:10:15: That's a real resilience test.

00:10:17: So operationally every company needs to ask themselves and David Hosey noted this was framed brilliantly at University of Toronto panel is basically when lights go out what are you legally and operationally required while under attack.

00:10:34: And the scary part is most companies don't actually know the answer to that until a ransomware group encrypts their servers, right?

00:10:42: But the answers also changing depending on what industry you're in.

00:10:45: Ajish George provided this really fascinating insight into banking sector.

00:10:49: What did he say?

00:10:50: He pointed out that in finance resilience is no longer managed just at the firm level.

00:10:55: It has to be managed at the sector level.

00:10:59: Bank B steps in?

00:11:01: It means they are deeply, deeply interconnected.

00:11:04: When a critical system fails at a major bank regulators aren't just looking at how fast that specific bank can recover.

00:11:11: Okay what do you're looking

00:11:11: at?

00:11:12: They are looking at the clearing houses The transaction networks The shared liquidity pools.

00:11:16: Does a failure at Bank A trigger a systemic cascade That takes down Bank B and Bank C?

00:11:22: Oh wow So we have to work together.

00:11:25: Yeah Banks might compete fiercely for your mortgage or you're checking account, but when it comes to cyber resilience they absolutely must collaborate on defense.

00:11:34: The ecosystem survives together or it fails together?

00:11:37: That

00:11:37: is a wild paradigm shift!

00:11:39: Absolutely

00:11:40: Actually.

00:11:40: hey speaking of ecosystems if you are finding this deep dive into the changing tech landscape valuable make sure you hit subscribe on your feed right now so you don't miss our future deep dives.

00:11:50: we've got a lot of complex topics.

00:11:54: definitely need to unpack this next one.

00:11:57: Because if AI is today's immediate threat to our software and infrastructure, quantum computing is tomorrow's threat to are cryptography.

00:12:05: Oh man, quantum?

00:12:06: Yeah!

00:12:07: And remember that vault we talked about bearing in the backyard at the very beginning right

00:12:10: the encrypted data.

00:12:11: The clock on that is ticking down much faster than anyone anticipated.

00:12:17: I know the estimates for what it will actually take current encryption algorithms, they are just plummeting right now.

00:12:25: Drastically!

00:12:27: Ashish Jongil and Vijoy Pandey both highlighted a recent estimate from a quantum company called Alison Bobb.

00:12:33: What was their estimate?

00:12:34: They estimated it could take just twenty-two thousand five hundred ninety three cat cubits to break RSA.

00:12:39: twenty forty eight encryption in roughly three point one four days.

00:12:43: Okay there were two terms that we definitely need to translate for everyone listening.

00:12:47: First, RSA Twenty Forty Eight.

00:12:50: Why do We Care If That Breaks?

00:12:51: Well, RSA twenty-forty eight is essentially the padlock on The Modern Digital Economy.

00:12:57: Okay?

00:12:57: It secures your banking transactions you're encrypted emails Your corporate VPNs.

00:13:02: it relies On the fact that classical computers are just really bad at factoring massive prime numbers.

00:13:08: Right we take a normal computer millions of years

00:13:10: Exactly but a quantum computer can do it in days.

00:13:14: Got it.

00:13:15: and the second term cat cubits.

00:13:17: And remember back in twenty nineteen the theoretical estimate was that we would need something like twenty million standard qubits to break this encryption.

00:13:25: Yeah, That Was The Old Number.

00:13:27: So How Did We Get From Twenty Million Down To Under Twenty Three Thousand?

00:13:31: What Exactly Is A Cat Cupid?

00:13:32: So Standard Cubits Which Are The Building Blocks Of Quantum Computers.

00:13:36: They are Incredibly Fragile!

00:13:38: how fragile

00:13:39: Like a slight change In Temperature Or A Stray Microwave Can Cause Them To Lose Their Quantum State which Creates An Error.

00:13:45: Oh Well

00:13:46: To fix that, scientists had to group thousands of physical qubits together just to create one stable error-corrected logical qubit.

00:13:54: I see.

00:13:55: So that massive overhead is why we needed twenty million of them Exactly.

00:13:59: But a cat qubit which was named after Schrodinger's Cat.

00:14:02: It has engineered to be inherently stable against certain types of errors specifically bit flip errors at the actual hardware level.

00:14:10: so it corrects its own errors physically

00:14:12: yes and because you need Fastly fewer of them to do the exact same mathematical heavy lifting

00:14:19: which brings us right back to John Royce warning about those harvest now decrypt later tactics.

00:14:23: The hardware isn't fully here yet, but the theft is happening today

00:14:27: exactly.

00:14:27: adversaries are actively siphoning off heavily encrypted proprietary AI training datasets Intellectual property state secrets.

00:14:36: They know they can't read it today But they're just hoarding

00:14:38: yep if your company's intellectual property needs to stay confidential for the next decade.

00:14:43: Quantum computing is a today

00:14:45: problem.

00:14:46: And regulators are clearly taking this seriously.

00:14:49: Richard Intel pointed out that NIST has already set federal migration deadlines.

00:14:53: Right, the National Institute of Standards and Technology Yeah

00:14:56: They mandate that key establishment must be transitioned to post-quantum standards by twenty thirty... ...and digital signatures by twenty three one.

00:15:03: That's right around corner.

00:15:04: It

00:15:05: isn't just an IT problem anymore.

00:15:07: This puts liability on ownership of post quantum migration directly onto board directors.

00:15:12: But the logistics of that migration are just a nightmare.

00:15:15: Shan M makes a very practical point here, you cannot migrate what you cannot see

00:15:21: right?

00:15:21: The absolute first step for any organization is creating a cryptographic bill.

00:15:28: You need a comprehensive inventory of exactly which algorithms, which keys and which certificates are running deep inside your legacy applications.

00:15:35: And

00:15:35: I imagine most companies have literally zero idea where all their cryptographic keys were actually buried?

00:15:40: Precisely!

00:15:41: It's such massive unprecedented undertaking that Adi Lamar is pushing for the creation cryptographic transition studies.

00:15:52: A

00:15:53: whole new field?

00:15:54: Yeah, we literally need experts dedicated entirely to the logistics of moving the global digital economy onto replacement algorithms without you know breaking their internet.

00:16:03: Okay but here is where I want to push back a little.

00:16:05: okay

00:16:05: go for it Whenever a new terrifying technology emerges The corporate world tends to panic and just create a new C-suite title.

00:16:12: We saw with chief digital officers then Chief AI officers.

00:16:16: Oh

00:16:16: i see Where You're going.

00:16:17: yeah

00:16:17: does every company suddenly needed chief quantum officer now?

00:16:21: So, Rob Zelinka offers a very grounded perspective on this.

00:16:24: He argues firmly that no your local community bank or mid-sized logistics firm does not need a chief quantum officer.

00:16:31: Thank goodness!

00:16:32: Right

00:16:33: creating a new title every time technology evolves just Thins out accountability.

00:16:37: What they actually need is that quantum exposure inventory we just talked about, and that should be managed by the existing CISO and CIO.

00:16:44: That makes total sense.

00:16:45: You only hire a new C-suite title if it comes with real budget in a mandate to change the architecture.

00:16:51: otherwise It's just corporate signaling.

00:16:53: The people building the quantum machines aren't just signalling though.

00:16:56: They see their writing on the wall.

00:16:58: Antonio Gomes noted that Ion Q, which is one of the leading quantum hard work companies.

00:17:02: They just acquired a cybersecurity firm for up to one point three billion dollars.

00:17:07: Yeah That Is A Massive Market Signal.

00:17:10: The Companies Building The Machines That Will Break Cryptography.

00:17:13: they know that Cybersecurity will be the very first commercial application Of Their Technology.

00:17:18: So They Are Positioning Themselves On Both Sides Of The Board.

00:17:21: Exactly

00:17:23: so.

00:17:23: if we look at the big picture We have AI agents demanding massive compute to break our software, and quantum computers demanding massive power to break out encryption.

00:17:32: Right

00:17:33: But...to power?

00:17:34: both of these revolutions we are slamming into the literal physical limits on our planet…we have fundamentally change hardware itself.

00:17:42: The infrastructure strain is unprecedented right now.

00:17:45: MD Ferro's alum highlighted the current data center heat crisis.

00:17:49: The hyperscale growth of AI is driving massive demand for custom immersion and liquid cooling systems,

00:17:54: just because of the heat?

00:17:55: Yeah!

00:17:56: The chips running these AI models run so hot that traditional air conditioning is physically incapable of cooling them down.

00:18:03: you have to pump liquid directly over the processors.

00:18:07: The sheer scale of the power requirements is hard to even wrap your head around.

00:18:11: Giorgio Autori analyzed Qatar's new twenty billion dollar AI ecosystem.

00:18:15: Oh, that project is massive!

00:18:17: Yeah they are building fourteen data centers with one hundred three megawatts total capacity.

00:18:22: all just support a sovereign twenty seven billion parameter large language model.

00:18:26: Wow

00:18:27: generating that much electricity and then cooling the subsequent heat in desert climate.

00:18:32: it pushes boundaries.

00:18:33: physical materials

00:18:34: Which is exactly why the biggest tech companies are having to engineer their way out of fundamental physics constraints.

00:18:41: Rug vendor Arnie provided a fascinating analysis on how Google is fighting these limits.

00:18:45: Okay, How Are They Doing It?

00:18:47: Well as Moore's law The rule that transistors shrink and get more efficient As That Slows Down Google Is Having To Attack The Land Hour Limit.

00:18:55: Ok I am not a physicist.

00:18:57: What Is The Land hour limit?

00:18:59: It's a principle of thermodynamics.

00:19:01: it basically states that simply erasing one single bit of information fundamentally generates a minimum unavoidable amount of heat.

00:19:09: Okay

00:19:10: As computing scales into the trillions of parameters for AI, That microscopic heat becomes massive inferno.

00:19:16: So how does Google fight a law of Thermodynamics?

00:19:19: They use their custom tensor processing units, or TPUs.

00:19:22: They strip out all the general-purpose computing overhead that a standard chip has meaning they perform less unnecessary work and therefore generate less heat per calculation.

00:19:31: Oh!

00:19:31: That's smart.

00:19:33: And there also attacking data transfer bottlenecks right?

00:19:36: Arnie mentioned the Hallevo limit.

00:19:38: Yes The Halleva Limit dictates absolute maximum amount of information you can pack into single quantum state like a beam.

00:19:46: To push past traditional copper wires, Google is using optical circuit switches in their data centers.

00:19:52: Instead of routing data electronically they use microscopic arrays of mirrors to bounce lasers directly from fiber-to-fiber.

00:19:59: Lasers and mirrors?

00:20:00: Yeah!

00:20:01: They

00:20:01: are even testing computing capabilities in space with satellites looking to utilize limitless solar power and the ambient cold of orbit.

00:20:10: So they're literally trying to escape Earth's physical constraints.

00:20:12: This actually connects perfectly to a massive breakthrough that Ron Chiarello, Avi Arvanidis and John Prisco were posting about regarding PsyQuantum.

00:20:22: Right the new switch?

00:20:23: Yeah now Psyquantum is a quantum computing company but their very first commercial product isn't actually a quantum computer.

00:20:31: it has an eight by eight optical circuit switch designed specifically for AI data centers

00:20:37: And we really have to explain why this is such a tremendous engineering feed.

00:20:41: in a traditional AI data center Data moves through fiber optic cables as light.

00:20:45: It's incredibly fast, right?

00:20:47: But every time that light hits a traditional switch to be routed to a different server the Light has to hit a transceiver Be converted into an electrical signal.

00:20:55: wait so it actually stops being light.

00:20:57: exactly it becomes electrons.

00:21:00: it gets routed Through silicon chips is electrons and then it gets converted back Into a laser to go back into the fiber.

00:21:05: okay So it's An optical Electrical optical conversion

00:21:10: Yes, and every single time you convert photons to electrons in back it costs power.

00:21:16: It generates massive amounts of heat And it adds latency into the AI model.

00:21:20: So a quantum computing company which has spent what?

00:21:23: A decade learning how to manipulate individual photons without losing them.

00:21:27: They took that tech... ...and built a switch for AI.

00:21:32: yes Cybert's Switch moves data entirely as light with just one point two decibels signal loss.

00:21:38: Wow It never converts the data back to electrons, it reconfigures its routing in milliseconds.

00:21:43: Its power eliminates heat of electrical conversion and drastically speeds up network.

00:21:49: That is just incredible!

00:21:51: It's a perfect example how these frontier technologies are cross-pollinating.

00:21:55: right now A solution built to solve impossible physics on a quantum computer has been commercialized as solving an AI datacenter.

00:22:04: It really emphasizes how interconnected this all.

00:22:07: Honestly, that leads me to a final thought for you.

00:22:09: To take away from all this we've explored how AI is exposing our software vulnerabilities at machine speed.

00:22:16: We've looked at how quantum computing is preparing to shatter our cryptographic foundations And we've seen how both of these revolutions are pushing the thermodynamic limits of our physical infrastructure.

00:22:26: But here is the provocative reality?

00:22:28: That kind of ties it altogether for me.

00:22:31: if there's survival over your digital infrastructure Over the next decade requires immense power for AI defense liquid-cooled data centers and entirely new post quantum cryptographic networks, then the ultimate differentiator for companies won't just be who has the best code.

00:22:45: No not at all.

00:22:46: The companies that survive this rewrite won't Be the ones with the smartest algorithms They will be the ones Who successfully secure their physical energy supply chains?

00:22:55: And cooling resources first.

00:22:58: We are moving from a world where software eats everything to A World Where Physical Energy dictates if the Software is allowed To Run At All.

00:23:06: Yeah, that's the bottom

00:23:20: line.