Best of LinkedIn: ICT & Tech Insights CW 45/ 46

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about ICT and tech insights in CW-forty-five and forty-six.

00:00:09: Frennus supports ICT enterprises with market and competitive intelligence, decoding emerging technologies, customer insights, regulatory shifts, and competitor strategies, so product teams and strategy leaders don't just react, but shape the future.

00:00:24: Welcome back.

00:00:24: For today's deep dive, we're taking on a really critical mission.

00:00:28: We've synthesized two full weeks of discussion from top professional networks, specifically curated insights from calendar weeks, forty-five and forty-six.

00:00:36: Right, and our goal is to outline the big ICT and tech trends that... you know, should really be on your radar right now.

00:00:42: And what's immediately obvious, looking at all this, is a major market chef.

00:00:46: I mean, a really definitive

00:00:47: one.

00:00:47: Yeah, it's like we were so far past the let's try a pilot phase.

00:00:51: The whole conversation has moved from just pure experimentation right into applied operational capability.

00:00:57: Exactly.

00:00:58: So leaders are now talking about CAPEX, about infrastructure readiness, competitive positioning.

00:01:02: And the human challenges.

00:01:03: The surprisingly difficult human side of this whole... transformation.

00:01:08: The question is no longer if, it's how fast can you actually make this work?

00:01:12: Precisely.

00:01:12: And that operational urgency brings us straight to our first theme, the quantum revolution and the geopolitical race.

00:01:18: Quantum or QT is no longer some research curiosity.

00:01:22: It's now an urgent operational and even sovereign necessity.

00:01:28: I think the most striking change is how quantum readiness is being talked about.

00:01:32: It's now a foundational business pillar.

00:01:34: I saw Jan Henrich Lace frame it as a business imperative for electronics and IoT.

00:01:38: Ah,

00:01:39: yeah, with the three A's.

00:01:40: Exactly.

00:01:40: Awareness, access, and alignment.

00:01:43: You have to start aligning your R&D and your supply chain for these future hybrid systems now.

00:01:48: You just can't wait.

00:01:49: And a huge driver for that alignment is cybersecurity.

00:01:52: I mean, the threats are looming.

00:01:53: Fabina and Ioannia pointed out a really hard deadline.

00:01:55: The

00:01:56: EU one.

00:01:56: Yep.

00:01:57: The European Union's roadmap is aiming for a full migration to post-quantum cryptography PQC by twenty thirty five.

00:02:03: Wow.

00:02:04: That's not far off at all when you think about the scale of what needs to be overhauled.

00:02:08: It's not.

00:02:08: If you're not planning that migration, you are essentially just guaranteeing you'll be exposed later.

00:02:12: What's really fascinating though is how quantum is being positioned.

00:02:17: It's not just an accelerator for AI.

00:02:19: It's becoming a stabilizer for the whole AI economy.

00:02:23: A stabilizer.

00:02:25: How

00:02:25: so?

00:02:26: Well, Ben Jones put forward this powerful argument that quantum is the rescue mechanism for classical AI.

00:02:32: He says the classical system is actually facing a kind of structural collapse.

00:02:36: Oh, because of the GPU arms race and the energy costs?

00:02:39: Exactly

00:02:39: that.

00:02:40: The GPU arms race, fixed energy caps in key markets, and just spiraling unsustainable costs.

00:02:47: So quantum doesn't just make AI faster, it makes it well.

00:02:51: Fiscally and ecologically viable.

00:02:53: Joe on Domingos confirmed that.

00:02:54: He said, quantum won't replace AI, it'll amplify it.

00:02:57: Unlocking value in things like chemistry, logistics, stuff current supercomputers just can't touch.

00:03:02: And if that infrastructure is the key to everything, then sovereignty becomes the name of the game.

00:03:07: I saw McKell Kay and Sahar Hijazi both celebrate Europe's research ecosystem, which is world-class, but they gave this really stark warning.

00:03:14: The danger of dependency.

00:03:15: Yes.

00:03:17: You can't just do the research.

00:03:19: Europe has to build the domestic capacity for the actual quantum infrastructure.

00:03:23: Otherwise, you're just importing the hardware and you haven't secured anything.

00:03:26: In this infrastructure race, it's not just happening on Earth anymore.

00:03:31: This is where the story gets really dramatic.

00:03:33: Dr.

00:03:34: Timo Jarrett-Blank detailed this new, very quiet space race.

00:03:39: A space race?

00:03:40: For what?

00:03:41: Helium III.

00:03:42: I know it's used in physics, but why is it so critical for IT?

00:03:46: It's an essential rare coolant, not just for quantum computers, but also for hyperscale data centers that need these extreme cryogenic conditions.

00:03:53: And the supply chain has literally gone extraterrestrial.

00:03:56: You're kidding.

00:03:56: Not at all.

00:03:57: Blank cited a confirmed contract between a U.S.

00:04:00: company Interlune and Bluefors in Finland to start lunar extraction of Helium III by twenty thirty.

00:04:05: So our digital sovereignty might depend on.

00:04:07: Yeah.

00:04:08: on Moondust.

00:04:09: It really puts the competition in perspective.

00:04:11: It

00:04:11: does.

00:04:12: It makes European self-reliance incredibly urgent.

00:04:14: But, you know, we are seeing some concrete progress.

00:04:16: Max Weber highlighted that OVH Cloud launched its quantum platform.

00:04:20: Right.

00:04:21: Using the Pascal hardware with a hundred neutral atom quibits.

00:04:24: And

00:04:24: Ben Anderson noted that Kilimanjaro Quantum Tech launched a truly multimodal quantum data center in Barcelona.

00:04:31: It combines analog, digital quantum, and classical HPC.

00:04:36: So they're building the exact high systems that Les was talking about.

00:04:39: That's the definition of operational readiness right there.

00:04:41: Okay, let's pivot now.

00:04:42: Keeping that sovereignty context in mind, let's move to theme two.

00:04:46: Digital sovereignty, interdependence, and the momentum we're seeing in open source.

00:04:50: And this is such a crucial context for every European business.

00:04:54: I mean, Ian Keen underlined the sheer scale of the dependency, a staggering seventy percent of the EU cloud market, and two-thirds of all card transactions.

00:05:03: They all rely on non-European providers.

00:05:06: That level of reliance is a massive vulnerability.

00:05:09: And that pressure leads to a pretty sharp debate.

00:05:12: Whelan Holfelder, drawing from a Google Cloud study, argued against a sort of isolationist fortress Europe approach.

00:05:18: Because it would lead to economic decline.

00:05:20: Right.

00:05:21: He promoted what they called a smart stack approach, balancing control with, you know, the need for global innovation.

00:05:27: But that's the real tension, isn't it?

00:05:29: If the US Cloud Act lets US authorities demand data no matter where it's stored, isn't some isolation necessary, even if it has a short-term cost.

00:05:39: That's

00:05:39: the core of it, and it's driving real action.

00:05:42: Shelley DeMott Kramer detailed a big governmental shift away from some of these U.S.

00:05:47: ecosystems.

00:05:48: You mean like Denmark and parts of Germany moving off windows and office.

00:05:50: Exactly.

00:05:51: Schleswig-Holstein in Germany.

00:05:53: It's because of rising costs, control issues, and specific worries about the Cloud Act.

00:05:59: They're embracing mature, open-source alternatives like LibreOffice and Linux.

00:06:03: That's a huge political... statement, basically saying for government functions, control is more important than vendor walk-in.

00:06:09: Absolutely.

00:06:09: And this whole movement strengthens the need for European digital foundations.

00:06:13: Roberta DeCosmo stressed how urgent it is to scale up software heritage, for example.

00:06:18: And on the AI side, we're seeing the same push for sovereignty.

00:06:21: Elka Andrel showcased that huge SOI initiative at Leibniz University at Hanover.

00:06:26: The one building the massive European LLM.

00:06:29: That's the one.

00:06:30: They're using the industrial AI cloud to develop a one hundred billion parameter sovereign model.

00:06:35: They're not waiting around.

00:06:37: They're building a competitive controlled alternative right now.

00:06:40: Okay, so let's move on to theme three.

00:06:42: We need to talk about the reality of scaling all this AI, the agents, the readiness and this this value gap.

00:06:49: Yeah, we've talked about the ambition, but insights from the Gardner Symposium confirmed that despite huge investment, only eleven percent of organizations are seeing clear financial ROI from AI.

00:06:59: That eleven percent figure, it was noted by Maha Almatari and Nelson Pinho.

00:07:03: It just highlights a massive value gap.

00:07:06: The whole discussion is about moving beyond pilots to walk this golden path.

00:07:10: Which means balancing the tech with human and governance readiness.

00:07:13: Exactly.

00:07:13: Without governance, the investment just evaporates, and that challenge is getting bigger with the rise of a gentic AI.

00:07:19: Dr.

00:07:20: Ferry Ebelhessen pointed this out.

00:07:22: AI agents are moving way past simple automation.

00:07:25: They're orchestrating workflows, making autonomous decisions, even optimizing infrastructure in real time, like radio cells in the telecom network.

00:07:33: That completely changes the architectural baseline.

00:07:36: Jasim Abdul Rahman emphasized that multi-agent systems, these swarms of small focused agents, are becoming the new enterprise standard.

00:07:46: And

00:07:46: that's where the urgency flips straight over to risk.

00:07:49: If these agents are autonomous, they just exponentially expand the attack surface.

00:07:53: Hater Pasha stressed that identity and permissions are now the single most critical security layer.

00:07:58: And he backed that with a statistic that is, well, it's absolutely terrifying.

00:08:02: Go on.

00:08:03: Machine identity is already outnumbered humans by orders of magnitude.

00:08:07: About

00:08:08: eighty to one.

00:08:09: Eighty to one.

00:08:09: Yeah.

00:08:09: So for every employee I can see, there are eighty invisible machine workers that IT has to manage.

00:08:14: Think about that.

00:08:15: You have this massive shadow workforce of machines and unmanaged permissions for them are the critical vulnerability.

00:08:21: You can't manage that manually.

00:08:23: That one statistic should trigger an immediate access control audit for.

00:08:27: Well, for everyone listening.

00:08:28: It should.

00:08:29: And the lack of governance has real high costs.

00:08:32: Knitmore pointed out the brutal cost of health care breaches averaging seven point four two million dollars per incident.

00:08:38: And that's directly linked to ungoverned AI adoption.

00:08:41: Directly.

00:08:42: With ninety seven percent of organizations lacking adequate AI access controls.

00:08:46: So the real barrier to AI's value isn't the tech.

00:08:49: It's the people.

00:08:51: Dunjus Denvukovic said it perfectly.

00:08:53: The real cost of AI is the transition.

00:08:55: the process mapping, the training, the change management.

00:08:58: Precisely.

00:08:59: Maha Almateri and Nelson Pinho both said that human capability fostering curiosity, psychological safety, that's what will decide who wins the AI race, not who buys the most GPUs.

00:09:11: A crucial message.

00:09:12: Okay, let's pivot hard into our final theme.

00:09:15: Cybersecurity and next-generation defense strategies.

00:09:17: All of this has to be secured.

00:09:19: For

00:09:19: sure.

00:09:20: And immediate threats are still highly profitable.

00:09:23: Matthew Rosenquist highlighted the ongoing exploitation of the crypto industry.

00:09:27: We saw one exploit on the balance or decentralized finance

00:09:30: platform.

00:09:30: The losses were huge there, weren't they?

00:09:32: Over a hundred million dollars.

00:09:33: In a single attack, that kind of money just professionalizes cybercrime even further.

00:09:37: A

00:09:37: hundred million in one hit.

00:09:39: And attackers aren't always using something super exotic, right?

00:09:42: Groups like Scattered Spider are just exploiting basic gaps.

00:09:45: Exactly.

00:09:46: Francis Odom confirmed that identity is now the primary attack surface.

00:09:50: They're just hitting weaknesses in identity systems, SAWS configurations, and cloud permissions.

00:09:55: Which brings us back to defending against the ultimate identity threat, the quantum computer.

00:10:00: Since PQC migration takes so long, we're seeing some really innovative alternatives, Papa.

00:10:05: Right, like the one to Bias M Lipsky discuss, the funding for Cyberridge's photonic layer security, PLS.

00:10:11: Tell us more about PLS.

00:10:12: How is it different from PQC?

00:10:14: It's a fundamental shift.

00:10:16: It moves security out of the cryptographic layer and into the physics layer.

00:10:19: Yeah.

00:10:20: PLS operates at the physical layer, transforming data into what they just call optical noise.

00:10:25: So there's nothing to intercept?

00:10:26: Nothing to intercept, record, or decrypt.

00:10:29: Even for a quantum computer, it's a genuine hardware alternative to PQC and QKD.

00:10:34: That's a paradigm shift.

00:10:36: So finally, across all these risks, identity, agents, quantum threats, William McBurrow had a great reminder for security leaders.

00:10:44: Ah, that the CISO's most powerful tool isn't technical?

00:10:47: Right, it's effective communication.

00:10:49: It's about enabling leaders to make informed business decisions about risk, not just technical security ones.

00:10:55: It has to be translated into the language of the balance sheet.

00:10:57: Okay, so let's try to... synthesize all of this.

00:11:00: What we've really seen in this deep dive are four big shifts.

00:11:03: First, the wild acceleration of quantum infrastructure and this fierce geopolitical race for resources, including literal moondust.

00:11:12: Second, Europe's intense strategic focus on digital sovereignty, managing dependencies through things like the smart stack and open source.

00:11:20: Third, the absolute critical need for human readiness and governance to close that AI value gap, especially with autonomous agents.

00:11:28: And the last one.

00:11:29: And finally, the pivot in cybersecurity.

00:11:31: It's all about identity protection now and looking at these new physics layer post-quantum defenses.

00:11:37: That's an excellent summary.

00:11:38: It makes it clear the future workforce is truly hybrid.

00:11:40: We heard that prediction from Gartner analysts like Karen Funk and Sam Yalla.

00:11:44: By twenty-thirty, seventy-five percent of IT work will be done by humans augmented by AI and twenty-five percent solely by AI.

00:11:52: It's about redefining the human role, not replacing

00:11:54: it.

00:11:55: Exactly.

00:11:56: So the key question for you, the listener.

00:11:57: is this.

00:11:59: With this massive wave of agentic systems and infrastructure change coming, are you actively optimizing your existing human workforce to lead the machine?

00:12:07: Or are you just adding tools that amplify your current and possibly broken processes?

00:12:13: If you enjoyed this deep dive, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:12:16: Also check out our other editions on cloud, defense tech, digital products and services, artificial intelligence, sustainability in green ICT and health tech.

00:12:24: Thank you for joining us on this exploration of the sources.

00:12:26: Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next one.