Techstrong Gang

Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard are joined by Kate Scarcella and Chris Blask to discuss open source AI economics, escalating copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft, and the PACT protocol for distinguishing trusted AI agents from malicious bots.

Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard are joined by Stephen Foskett and Jon Swartz to discuss Microsoft extending Windows 10 security updates, the White House easing restrictions on Anthropic’s Mythos 5 and the debate over AI-powered crime prediction.

Mike Vizard is joined by Jon Swartz, Jack Poller, Tracy Ragan and Jeff Reich to break down OpenAI and Broadcom’s custom Jalapeño AI chip, Qualcomm’s Modular acquisition, TSMC price pressure, new efforts to defend open source software and key takeaways from PlatformCon.

Explore the evolving landscape of AI in software development and platform engineering. This discussion delves into the impact of AI on developer roles, the shift in platform management, and the influence of external factors on AI's trajectory. Discover how AI is reshaping coding, security, and the future of work, with insights from the Convene Conference Center.

Mike Vizard is joined by Jon Swartz, Teri Robinson, JP Morgenthal, Wicki Wang and Andi Mann to break down the push to accelerate quantum computing, China reclaiming the supercomputing crown with CPU-only LineShine and why open-source AI may be the only path forward for much of the world.

Hosts Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard, joined by Chris Blask, Kate Scarcella and Sid Nag, break down the fight over AI regulation, backlash to Jeff Bezos’ AI infrastructure comments, why engineering needs every great mind it can find and new security warnings around frontier AI models.

Hosts Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard, joined by Stephen Foskett, Jon Swartz and Elizabeth Safran, break down the reported Apple-Intel chip deal, GPS and orbital interference concerns, and how AI is reshaping expectations for entry-level workers.

Hosts Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard, joined by Jon Swartz and Gina Rosenthal, break down OpenAI’s multistate regulatory probe and Florida lawsuit, AWS’s expanding AI push across software supply chain and DevOps workflows, and Anthropic joining Frontier’s $915 million carbon removal initiative.

Alan Shimel, Jon Swartz, Teri Robinson and JP Morgenthal, break down SpaceX’s reported $60 billion move to acquire Cursor, Databricks’ push into AI agents, cost controls and cybersecurity, and Satya Nadella’s warning about AI centralization hollowing out industries.

Hosts Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard, joined by Chris Blask and Kate Scarcella, break down reports of an OpenAI price war with Anthropic, Jensen Huang’s criticism of leaders blaming AI for layoffs and the forecast that cybersecurity spending could reach $521.7 billion by 2031.

Hosts Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard, joined by Jon Swartz, Garima Bajpai and Yvette Schmitter, break down the Anthropic fallout, rising sovereignty fights over AI and cloud infrastructure and SpaceX’s record-setting surge.

Host Mike Vizard is joined by Jeff Reich, Jack Gold, Jon Swartz and Tracy Ragan to break down rising chip costs, the expanding role of AI across DevOps workflows and IBM’s warning that AI agents are raising the governance burden for technology leaders.

Hosts Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard, joined by Jon Swartz and Ira, break down Visa and OpenAI building payment infrastructure for AI agents, a new AI-designed universal vaccine tested in humans and the push for zero-trust security around agentic AI.

Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard, joined by Fred Wilmot, Teri Robinson and Jon Swartz, break down Anthropic’s new safety brakes for Mythos AI, the trust tactics driving ShinyHunters and China’s massive AI infrastructure push.

Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard, joined by Chris Blask, Kate Scarcella and Sid Nag, break down Apple’s WWDC AI push, OpenAI’s confidential filing and SpaceX’s reported AI cloud deal with Google.

Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard, joined by Barbara Roos, Brendan Burke, Dan O’Brien and Garima Bajpai, break down why semiconductors now drive every serious AI conversation, why control warnings are intensifying and why data center opposition is rising.

Mike Vizard is joined by Jeff Reich, Jack Poller and Jon Swartz to break down proposals for AI taxes and wealth funds, the growing case for a U.S. Cyber Force and AWS’s preview of micropayments for AI agents.

Mike Vizard is joined by Gina Rosenthal, Mitch Ashley and Jon Swartz to break down Europe’s push for tech sovereignty, the rising complexity of AI cost management and growing security anxiety as frontier AI access expands.

Hosts Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard, joined by Tom Hollingsworth, Andi Mann and Jon Swartz, break down Microsoft’s latest AI push, the Trump administration’s scaled-back executive order and Cisco’s effort to own the control layer for AI infrastructure.

Mike Vizard is joined by Anne Ahola Ward, Sid Nag, Chris Blask and Kate Scarcella to break down Anthropic’s major IPO moment, NVIDIA’s new AI PC and robotics push, and the escalating dispute between Microsoft and a security researcher.

Mike Vizard, Stephen Foskett and Garima Bajpai break down the reported expansion of U.S. surveillance toward anti-technology extremists, the automation layer’s push to own enterprise AI and the new clean-tech effort backed by major tech companies.

Mike Vizard, Jon Swartz, Jack Poller, Jack Gold and Jeff Reich break down three stories showing where the AI era is colliding with business reality, public resistance and strategic competition. The first segment, No AI Jobs Apocalypse After All, looks at the growing retreat from earlier “AI jobs apocalypse” predictions as tech leaders face pressure to show revenue, not just disruption. The second segment, AI Contamination, turns to the backlash against AI data centers. Erin Brockovich is targeting local opposition, and state-level policymakers are beginning to respond as environmental and community concerns grow louder. The final segment, Quantum Arms Race, focuses on Washington’s new $2 billion push into quantum computing and what it signals about the next phase of national computing competition. From jobs and infrastructure to quantum competition, today’s show is about where the AI boom is meeting real-world constraints.

Mike Vizard, Jon Swartz, Fred Wilmot and Gina Rosenthal break down three stories shaping the next phase of AI infrastructure, public resistance and model safety. The first segment, IBM and Red Hat are bringing together what they’ve learned from frontier AI models and 20,000 engineers to launch Project Lightwell, a $5 billion initiative aimed at helping enterprises better secure their open source software. The second segment, NVIDIA Corp. CEO Jensen Huang announced on Wednesday that the artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant plans to ramp up its annual spending in Taiwan to about $150 billion. The final segment, Open Source AI Oops, examines reports that free software can strip guardrails from open AI models from major players like Meta and Google. The bigger issue is whether open access is colliding with safety in ways the industry still is not ready to manage. From AI geopolitics to local resistance to model safety, today’s show is about where the AI boom is running into real-world consequences.

Alan Shimel, Mike Vizard, Jon Swartz, Dan O’Brien, Teri Robinson, and Andi Mann break down a major move in the enterprise intelligence market as Futurum Group enters a definitive agreement to acquire Aptiviti, the parent company of ETR. The first and main segment, Futurum Group Acquisition, looks at what this deal could mean for the future of research, analyst influence, enterprise intelligence, and market signal across the tech industry. This is not just an M&A story. It is a story about who gets to shape market understanding in the next era of enterprise tech. The second segment, Rise of the AI Industrial Complex, turns to the growing concentration of power around AI as infrastructure, capital, chips, and platforms increasingly reinforce one another. The final segment, Happy Birthday GDPR!, looks at GDPR eight years later and what its long-term impact says about privacy, regulation, and digital accountability in an AI-heavy world. From consolidation in industry intelligence to concentration in AI power to the staying force of privacy regulation, today’s show is about who shapes the next tech era.

Alan Shimel, Mike Vizard, Chris Blask, Kate Scarcella, and Mitch Ashley break down three stories that show AI entering a more mature and more demanding phase. The first segment, Vatican AI Doctrine, looks at Pope Leo XIV’s call for the “disarmament” of AI and his rejection of the traditional “just war” doctrine in this context. The conversation is about more than rhetoric. It is about whether the global debate over AI is moving from capability to morality, restraint, and responsibility. The second segment, AI Benjamins, turns to the next phase of the AI market: profitability. If the race is entering its money-making era, then the central question is no longer just who can build the biggest model, but who can turn AI into durable business value. The final segment, AI Harness, explores the industry’s rediscovery of systems engineering. As AI systems grow more complex, organizations are relearning an old lesson: raw model power is not enough. Without discipline, structure, and integration, AI cannot scale reliably in the real world. From moral limits to market pressure to engineering discipline, today’s episode is about AI growing up fast. Read more: Pope Leo XIV Demands ‘Disarmament’ of AI; Renounces ‘Just War’ Doctrine. The AI Race Just Entered Its Profitability Era. The AI Industry Is Rediscovering Systems Engineering 

Mike Vizard, Jack Gold, Jeff Reich, Jack Poller and Tracy Ragan break down three stories shaping the next phase of enterprise AI: the Trump administration’s move to finance global adoption of U.S. AI, new survey data showing more production issues tied to AI in DevOps environments and the accelerating role of autonomous AI in cybersecurity. The first segment, AI Subsidies, looks at what it means when AI policy becomes economic statecraft. If the U.S. is now actively financing global adoption of domestic AI platforms, the race is no longer just about innovation. It is about distribution, influence and infrastructure lock-in. The second segment, AI Trouble in DevOps Land, turns to the operational cost of faster AI adoption. As more teams embed AI into software workflows, CloudBees survey data suggests production issues are rising, raising harder questions about reliability, governance and how much trust teams should place in AI-generated output. The final segment, AI Task Automation in Security, focuses on the hyper-acceleration of autonomous AI cyber capabilities. The bigger issue is no longer whether AI can support security teams. It is how quickly autonomous capabilities are reshaping both defense and offense. From geopolitical AI expansion to production instability to autonomous cyber operations, today’s episode is about where AI is scaling faster than the systems around it.

Alan Shimel, Mike Vizard, Fred Wilmot, Jon Swartz and Gina Rosenthal break down Linus Torvalds’ warning about AI bug-report overload in Linux workflows, Google’s bigger agent-and-search push at I/O 2026 and the growing role of open AI in the broader software stack.

Join the Techstrong Gang as they dissect critical cybersecurity issues, including the CISA credential exposure and the proliferation of AI agents. Experts Stephen Foskett, Jon Swartz, and Teri Robinson delve into the risks of unsecured credentials and the challenges of managing unknown AI agents within organizations. This discussion highlights the urgent need for robust security practices and governance in the evolving tech landscape.

This Techstrong Gang discussion delves into the implications of OpenAI's commercial shift and the potential impact on open-source AI funding. Experts examine challenges in open-source code quality, supply chain vulnerabilities, and the role of AI in addressing these issues. The conversation also covers AI-generated content risks, cybersecurity preparedness, and the need for human oversight in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Alan Shimel, Jon Swartz, Stephen Foskett, Garima Bajpai and Evgeniy Kharam break down China’s AI chip push, Anthropic’s self-correcting agentic capability and what AI Tech Field Day reveals about real-world AI deployment.

Mike Vizard, Jack Poller, Jeff Reich, Jon Swartz and Tracy Ragan break down Microsoft’s warning that AI agents can silently corrupt data in long workflows, the rise of spec-driven coding and the growing security risks of the exception economy.

Alan Shimel, Mike Vizard, Jon Swartz, Gina Rosenthal, Fred Wilmot and Chhaya break down how corporate AI ambition is running into financial and human limits, why backlash against nearby data centers is growing and how OpenAI’s Daybreak is intensifying the AI cybersecurity race.

Today, Techstrong Gang explores the evolving landscape of AI integration within enterprise environments, as discussed at major tech conferences. Key insights from SAP, Veeam, and Red Hat highlight the critical need for reliable data, robust agent management, and secure access controls. The discussion delves into how AI agents are poised to revolutionize workflows, demanding new approaches to IT management and security.

Apple’s foldable iPhone rumors are getting real, OpenAI is making a major enterprise move with its $4 billion deployment push and Tomoro acquisition, and more than 402,000 internet-reachable AI agent hosts are already exposing a growing new attack surface. Mike Vizard, Chris Blask, Sid Nag, Anne Ahola Ward and Stacey Thayer break down what these stories say about the next phase of AI, enterprise strategy and cybersecurity risk.        

Today’s Techstrong Gang looks at AI-driven DevOps productivity gains, mounting application security concerns and the latest trends emerging from Mobile Tech Field Day

Mike Vizard, Guy Currier, Jack Poller, Tracy Ragan and Wickey Wang break down the overlooked gaps in agent security governance, DXC Technology’s AI platform for automating IT tasks and the rise of decentralized AI infrastructure in residential settings.

Alastair Cooke, Fred Wilmot, Gina Rosenthal, Jon Swartz and Mike Vizard break down Google’s Remy personal agent push, the optical networking buildout powering the AI boom and SAP’s $1.1 billion move into agentic AI. Today’s Techstrong Gang looks at who is trying to control the next layer of the AI stack.

Mike Vizard, Teri Robinson, Jon Swartz and JP Morgenthal break down IBM’s latest AI and quantum computing advances, ServiceNow and NVIDIA’s new Project Arc governance push for autonomous agents and the growing risk of browser extensions acting like spyware. Today’s Techstrong Gang connects quantum, AI governance and covert surveillance risk across the enterprise stack.    

Mike Vizard, Chris Blask, Ira Winkler, Kate Scarcella and Camberley Bates break down the proposed three-day patch rule, possible pre-release reviews for advanced AI models and new warnings about chatbot behavior in biological weapon test scenarios. Today’s Techstrong Gang looks at how AI is accelerating the pressure on cybersecurity, national security and public-safety policy.

Alan Shimel, Mike Vizard, Fred Wilmot, Chris Blask and Gina Rosenthal break down three stories shaping the enterprise AI conversation right now: MIT’s effort to improve how LLMs answer accurately, Salesforce’s push to automate backend office workflows with agentic AI, and rising demand for senior cybersecurity talent as AI raises the stakes for security teams.   The episode starts with AI the Liar, looking at MIT research aimed at making large language models produce more accurate answers. From there, the gang turns to Salesforce’s agentic AI platform, which the company says can automate and modernize fragmented back-office workflows using specialized agents and auditable digital blueprints.   The final segment focuses on cybersecurity hiring pressure. A Fortinet-commissioned survey of 2,750 cybersecurity and IT professionals found that 51% specifically need senior-level skills, 60% say finding cybersecurity talent with AI experience is their top security challenge and 87% expect to increase cybersecurity team size.   From model trust to workflow automation to the cyber skills gap, today’s show tracks where enterprise AI is creating both opportunity and strain.   #TechstrongGang #AI #Salesforce #Cybersecurity #AgenticAI

Hyperscalers may spend $725 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, but Kubernetes utilization remains weak, GPU inference is becoming the next cloud sprawl problem and agentic AI is opening new security risks. Today’s Techstrong Gang connects the dots across AI spending, knowledge graphs and Security Field Day 15. Jon Swartz, Mike Vizard and Stephen Foskett break down what it all means for enterprise tech.

Alan Shimel, Mike Vizard, Fred Wilmot, Chris Blask and Gina Rosenthal break down three stories shaping the enterprise AI conversation right now: MIT’s effort to improve how LLMs answer accurately, Salesforce’s push to automate backend office workflows with agentic AI, and rising demand for senior cybersecurity talent as AI raises the stakes for security teams.   The episode starts with AI the Liar, looking at MIT research aimed at making large language models produce more accurate answers. From there, the gang turns to Salesforce’s agentic AI platform, which the company says can automate and modernize fragmented back-office workflows using specialized agents and auditable digital blueprints.   The final segment focuses on cybersecurity hiring pressure. A Fortinet-commissioned survey of 2,750 cybersecurity and IT professionals found that 51% specifically need senior-level skills, 60% say finding cybersecurity talent with AI experience is their top security challenge and 87% expect to increase cybersecurity team size.   From model trust to workflow automation to the cyber skills gap, today’s show tracks where enterprise AI is creating both opportunity and strain.   #TechstrongGang #AI #Salesforce #Cybersecurity #AgenticAI

Jon Swartz, Chris Blask, Andi Mann and Teri Robinson break down three stories that show how quickly AI is colliding with real-world risk: a Cursor/Claude-powered coding agent tied to a Railway production data-loss scare, the Trump administration’s push to use AI to modernize air traffic planning, and the FBI-led takedown of the W3LL phishing-kit ecosystem tied to more than $20 million in attempted fraud.   The first segment looks at what happens when agentic coding tools get too much power in production. Reports say the PocketOS incident involved deletion of a production database and recent backups after an AI agent used a destructive Railway API path; Railway later recovered service quickly and patched the endpoint, but the episode exposed major questions around permissions, rollback design and human oversight.   The second segment turns to aviation. The FAA’s broader modernization push includes new software intended to improve airspace management and reduce disruption, while SMART-style planning tools are being positioned as a move from reactive to predictive operations. That raises the obvious question: where should AI sit inside a safety-critical system, and who owns accountability when predictive systems shape operational decisions?   The final segment focuses on phishing at industrial scale. The FBI says the W3LL phishing kit was sold for about $500, helped criminals impersonate trusted login pages, captured credentials and session data to bypass MFA, and was tied to over $20 million in attempted fraud; investigators also say W3LLSTORE facilitated sales of more than 25,000 compromised accounts from 2019 to 2023.   #TechstrongGang #AI #Cybersecurity #AIAgents #Phishing

The biggest week in AI just collided with the biggest week in software security. On today's Techstrong Gang , The gang breaks down three stories reshaping how the industry builds, ships, and defends software in 2026.    AI DETENTE — OpenAI and Microsoft have rewritten their partnership. OpenAI gets multi-cloud freedom (AWS, Google Cloud), Microsoft locks in long-term IP and revenue rights, and the Azure exclusivity that defined 2023-2025 is officially over. We unpack who actually won.    COPILOT LIMITS — GitHub paused new sign-ups for Copilot Pro, Pro+ and Student plans on April 20 and tightened weekly usage caps. Agentic coding sessions are burning 500,000+ tokens vs. ~100 for old-school autocomplete — and the flat-rate pricing model just broke. What this means for every other AI coding tool in 2026.   ️ PROJECT GLASSWING — Microsoft is embedding Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview into its Security Development Lifecycle. Mythos already found a 17-year-old FreeBSD remote-code-execution flaw (CVE-2026-4747) autonomously during preview. Anthropic has privately warned U.S. officials that this same capability in attacker hands makes large-scale cyberattacks "significantly more likely" in 2026. Defense vs. offense — who's winning the AI security race?   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━   ️ TODAY'S PANEL   Jon Swartz — Host, Techstrong TV   Mike Vizard — Editor-in-Chief, Techstrong Group   Kate Scarcella — Chief Architect, Cybersecurity, Trusted AI   Sid Nag — VP Analyst, Gartner   Anne Ahola Ward — CEO, CircleClick   Alex Porter — CEO, Lunar Outpost   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━    SOURCES   OpenAI–Microsoft partnership reset: https://openai.com/blog   GitHub Copilot pause announcement: https://github.blog   Microsoft Security Blog on Project Glasswing   Anthropic Project Glasswing   CVE-2026-4747 (FreeBSD NFS RCE): https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-4747   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━    JOIN THE CONVERSATION Drop your take in the chat — agree or disagree with the panel? We read live comments on air.    SUBSCRIBE for daily AI, DevOps, and security analysis: @TechstrongTV  Follow us: techstrong.tv | @TechstrongTV on X | Techstrong Group on LinkedIn    Catch the audio version on:   Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━   #TechstrongGang #AINews #OpenAI #Microsoft #Anthropic #ClaudeMythos #GitHubCopilot #AICoding #Cybersecurity #ProjectGlasswing #SDLC #DevSecOps #AgenticAI #CloudComputing #EnterpriseAI #TechNews #LiveStream

Jon Swartz hosts Garima Bajpai, Stephen Foskett and Chris Blask as Techstrong Gang breaks down the biggest AI infrastructure and DevOps stories of the week.   The panel dives into Google’s reported $40 billion bet on Anthropic, what it says about the escalating AI platform war and why the infrastructure stakes keep getting bigger. They also unpack Claude Code’s three-regression quality crash, raising fresh questions about reliability, performance drift and trust in AI-assisted software development.   From there, the gang looks at GitHub’s Copilot growth slowdown as AI coding economics come under pressure, before closing on the AIOps fatigue emerging at QlikConnect 2026 and what it reveals about enterprise expectations for AI in operations.   This episode connects the money, the models and the operational reality behind today’s AI development stack.   #TechstrongGang #Anthropic #ClaudeCode #AIOps #EnterpriseAI

The old enterprise playbook is breaking in three places at once — and the Gang is here for it. Jon Swartz takes the chair with Jack Poller, Tracy Ragan, Jeff Reich, and Andrew Storms to unpack the stories reshaping tech this week: THE POST-COOK ERA Tim Cook steps down September 1 after 15 years, 1,700%+ stock growth, and a 24x run in market cap. SVP John Ternus — an engineer's engineer — becomes Apple's 8th CEO, inheriting an AI product gap, supply-chain pressure, and Vision Pro's slow burn. Is an engineer-CEO exactly what Apple needs in the AI era, or exactly the wrong handoff at the wrong moment? AI INDIGESTION GitHub halts new Copilot Pro, Pro+, and Student sign-ups and tightens limits on existing users as agentic coding sessions now cost more than the user's monthly subscription. It's the first public crack in flat-rate AI economics — and a warning shot for Cursor, Windsurf, and everyone else selling "unlimited" AI for $20 a month. GOOGLE CLOUD NEXT, ROUND 2 New TPUs positioned as the main NVIDIA alternative. The Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform with per-agent identity and simulation testing. An A5X / Vera Rubin stack with NVIDIA promising 10x inference cost cuts and 10x throughput per megawatt. Networking scaling to 80,000 GPUs single-site. And a four-year NetApp deal aimed squarely at sovereign cloud. If Google is simultaneously competing with NVIDIA and partnering with NVIDIA, who actually owns the AI compute stack by 2027? 🔗 Articles discussed: • Tim Cook to Step Down; John Ternus Named Successor — https://techstrong.it/featured/tim-cook-to-step-down-as-apple-ceo-svp-john-ternus-named-successor/ • GitHub Halts Copilot Growth as AI Coding Costs Outpace Subscriptions — https://devops.com/github-halts-copilot-growth-as-ai-coding-costs-outpace-subscriptions/ • Google's New TPUs and Agent Platform — https://techstrong.it/featured/googles-new-tpus-and-agent-platform-offer-expanded-ai-solutions/ • Google & NVIDIA Extend AI Partnership — https://techstrong.ai/articles/google-nvidia-extend-ai-partnership-with-massive-infrastructure-expansion/ • NetApp-Google Cloud Unified Storage + Sovereign Cloud — https://techstrong.it/featured/netapp-google-cloud-partnership-supports-unified-storage-and-sovereign-cloud/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Techstrong Gang streams live Mon–Fri at 12 PM ET. Subscribe for daily DevOps, cloud-native, AI, and security coverage. 🌐 techstrong.tv | techstrong.ai | devops.com | securityboulevard.com 💼 LinkedIn: /company/techstrong-group 🐦 X: @techstrongtv #TechstrongGang #AppleCEO #JohnTernus #GitHubCopilot #AgenticAI #GoogleCloudNext #NVIDIA #NetApp #SovereignCloud #EnterpriseAI

The future of enterprise infrastructure is being renegotiated in real time, and SUSECON Day 4 makes that clear.   In this special edition of Techstrong Gang, Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard are joined by Steven Vaughan-Nichols live from Prague to break down the state of open source in the AI era, why sovereignty has become a defining issue in enterprise infrastructure and what these shifts mean for platform teams trying to build with flexibility and control.   The conversation explores whether AI will strengthen open source or overwhelm it, why agentic systems may drive even more open source code consumption and why enterprises increasingly want freedom not just in software, but in the platforms, models and infrastructure they choose to run.   From Linux and Kubernetes to AI factories, sovereignty and the next phase of enterprise platform strategy, this episode captures the biggest themes shaping SUSECON as the event heads into its final stretch. Featuring Alan Shimel, Mike Vizard and Steven Vaughan-Nichols.

The tech stack just got thrown in the air — and SUSECON 2026 is ground zero for what comes next.   On Day 3 of our live coverage from SUSECON 2026, Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard are joined by Stephen Dickens of HyperFrame Research and Christine Buccio of SUSE to break down the biggest storylines of the week: sovereign AI, the new partner ecosystem, the VMware/Broadcom fallout, and the uncomfortable truth facing every platform engineer, SRE, and VMware admin on the floor.   SUSE CTO Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo kicked the day off with a blunt message: IT leaders are "one executive order away from becoming a hostage." Our gang unpacks what that means for infrastructure sovereignty, AI factories, open source, and the chaos of trying to operationalize AI in production.

Digital sovereignty is no longer just a policy discussion. At SUSECON, it came through as a real infrastructure, AI and enterprise control strategy. In this episode of Techstrong Gang, recorded live from Prague, Alan Shimel and Mike Vizard break down the biggest Day 2 themes from SUSECON, including the rise of digital sovereignty, hybrid cloud expansion, AI factory strategy and the growing demand for alternatives to VMware-era lock-in. The conversation explores how SUSE is positioning itself around five strategic priorities, including digital sovereignty, hybrid cloud, converged application workloads, AI workloads and edge computing. Alan and Mike also dig into SUSE’s Nvidia AI Factory alignment, its Oracle marketplace expansion and why those moves matter in the bigger race for enterprise relevance.   But the deeper story is about control. Across Europe, enterprises and public sector buyers are signaling that they want more freedom of choice, less dependence on outside providers and more say over the platforms running their infrastructure and AI.   From open source heritage and virtualization strategy to the pressure Broadcom has created in the market, this episode looks at why sovereignty is becoming one of the defining forces in enterprise tech.   #TechstrongGang #SUSECON #DigitalSovereignty #SovereignAI #HybridCloud

Digital sovereignty is no longer a niche European policy conversation. It is becoming a major force shaping enterprise infrastructure, AI strategy and platform decisions worldwide. In this special edition of Techstrong Gang, recorded live from SUSECON in Prague, Alan Shimel, Mike Vizard and Mitch Ashley break down the big themes emerging from Day 1, including the growing push for digital sovereignty, the rising importance of sovereign AI models and infrastructure, and why enterprises are rethinking their dependence on external platforms and providers. The conversation explores how sovereignty now reaches far beyond data residency. It touches operations, ownership, control planes, AI models, infrastructure layers and the broader question of who really controls enterprise technology in the AI era. From Kubernetes and management frameworks to the strategic implications of regional independence and AI governance, this episode looks at why open infrastructure and sovereign control are becoming central to the future of enterprise IT. If you want to understand where AI, infrastructure and geopolitical technology strategy are heading next, this is the conversation to watch. #TechstrongGang #SUSECON #SovereignAI #DigitalSovereignty #OpenInfrastructure