Election Year Tech Issues: AI, Regulation, & Infrastructure | CompTIA Volley Podcast
Hey everybody, welcome to the latest edition of Volley. I'm Carolyn April, and I'm looking for my good buddy, Seth. Robinson, Seth, Hey, how you doing? I'm doing pretty well. Back from a vacation. I've been back a few
few days now, but so I had a little break. I went up to Maine, and that was quite nice at half a week of and weather, but another, the other half was nice weather, and yeah, now I'm just here, and it's feeling like fall is already clear. You're fully charged. Ready to, oh yeah, do more research than you've ever done in your life. Charged, fully charged. You know, I could use two weeks.
I've never really done the two week vacation thing. I think that that's a wise thing to do than the one, than the one week. And seriously, I think, yeah, you may actually like get some, some true R and R, if you get that second week in a row with the one weekend in between, where you're not going somewhere or going back from somewhere, which would be nice, right, right, and you didn't go far, but definitely, like, if you're trying to do, like, a big trip and jump on a plane or something, and you're only gone for a week, then you know, you got two days of travel in there. And it's, yeah, it's tricky, but no, but it was good, and I'm and feeling great, and we're in ready to go, ready? Well, I'm glad you're ready to go, because our topic for today is kind of in your wheelhouse, right? Since we're in an election year which people may have heard of, might have yeah, there's a lot of tech issues that have been talked about for, I think, a while, and it would be good to kind of bring those up, go through them, you know, I think whoever you know wins the election for, you know, the President and both houses of Congress, you know, that's going to dictate, I think, which direction a lot of these go in. But there's a lot to be considered. And I think it'd be worth kind of walking through them, talking about, you know, each side, or what the issues are, and and then we can kind of see where it goes.
Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot that, you know, touches in some way, shape or form, the federal government and Congress and how, you know, and it really will impact, you know, both large tech companies workers, smaller tech companies. There's just a lot of implications and how we deal with the world, internationally in terms of in terms of technology, situations, policy, trade, all of that. And there's a lot to consider. We're going to keep it off the candidates, necessarily, but there will be differences in the two administrations. So I just want to, like, set the table a little bit in that, in terms of the presidency, you're either going to get Trump or you're going to get Harris, and that's pretty much playing out clearly. There are different parties. They both have different
approaches. I think if you want to play out the stereotypes a little bit, you look at Harris's background, she's more of a prosecutor, she's a Democrat, more likely to side on a heavier regulation, heavier oversight type of things. And this, again, is the stereotypes, if they play out, Trump more laissez faire business guy. We've seen him before. He tends to be more
hands off, hands off, and definitely less regulatory in nature. But again, that could change. You never know how the wind blows there. We set the table a little bit with that, and then let's talk about each of these issues. And you can kind of for yourselves out there, sort of see where each of the candidates might fall. I think the first one
real, real quick on the candidate stuff. I think it's important to point out that, like all the issues that we talk about, they're not going to be handled in a vacuum. It's not going to be what is the best solution for this given issue.
And this is not unique to American politics. I think anything that's going through politics, there's a lot of gamesmanship, you know, there's a lot of, you know, behind the scenes, you know, dealing that's happening, lobbying that's going on, right? And so I think when we talk through the issues, we're going to come at it a little bit from that perspective of, like, what would, what are the technology pieces of this, right? But whoever gets into office, however this goes, there's going to be a lot more variables playing into it than just the pure technology of it all. Oh, 100% you'll have, you know, whichever you know, whatever, whichever way Congress goes, who who owns the Senate, who owns the house in terms of the majority, then you've got the individual state legislatures who all have their own agendas, you know? So if you're a legislator from California, you're gonna have very specific technology agenda versus, uh, legislator from somewhere else. So you're right, many, many
moving parts. Um, and it's not, it doesn't come down to one individual at all, ever, never never was. So I thought we'd kick off and we'll talk. Well, we've got a few big buckets, but they all sort of bleed into one another. But I think regulation
is, is one of the things that we should talk about first. Clearly, if you're a business owner in the technology space, if you're a large part of a large tech company, like a Microsoft or Google or any of the other. There's government regulation is something that you have to think about. There are
obviously matters that are on the books already in terms of compliance, things that companies in various sectors, like healthcare already have to follow, like a HIPAA, or in the finance sector, there's all any number of different compliance issues and mandates that those particular types of companies have to follow. But regulation covers a lot of things, and I think one of the big topics most topical today is probably how we are going to try to regulate or not. What's happening with artificial intelligence. AI has gotten the attention of legislatures and the Biden administration has done had Biden himself issued an executive order. So speaking of one individual being able to do something, but in this case, he did. They called for a lot of measures, protective measures
and exploratory measures to try to get a sense of how AI could potentially impact everything from cybersecurity within the government, from bias within the government, from all you know, you name the topics. So I think that issue is one of the newer ones that comes under the regulatory challenges that the government's going to have, and it's going to be one that's going to continue to ramp up. That is just one. And I'd say that was one of the bigger ones. And of course, you know, continuing on with other regulation issues. We're talking about things from data privacy, from, you know, who owns content, so intellectual property, types of challenges, can be regulated, social media, other things along those lines, in terms of protecting kids and and we have a lot on the table when it comes to regulation. So if you're a business owner, it
matters because you think of it and sometimes in in money terms and how it's going to impact you, in terms of the cost you might have to outlay to make sure you comply with regulation. But then there are the societal regulations around tech that are, that are out there, hopefully benevolent, benevolently, to help us, you know, protect our kids from from things online and keep the country safe and infrastructure wise, from cyber attacks. Yeah, I think, you know, the fact that you led off with AI, I think, kind of demonstrates how a lot of people are thinking about the regulatory space right now, right? So there's all this focus on AI, because it's a big deal and it's interesting to talk about many of the items that are kind of on the table in terms of, AI are about like, you know, the power of the model that you can build, or how you're training that model. And not every company, very few companies, are going to be building and training a model, right? And so it gets a lot of attention. And I think it gets a lot of attention among business owners, right? They like to have this knowledge. They have fun talking about it at the cocktail hour during the networking event, you know, wherever they're going, right? But then it doesn't impact their business. And I think because it
doesn't impact their business, that kind of leads to this false belief, maybe, that there are a lot of other regulations that they don't have to pay attention to the regulatory space at all, right? And that's where we see this in our cybersecurity research. We see this in our data research. Not as many people thinking about compliance, right? And like you mentioned, for the healthcare industry, the finance industry, those industries have had to been thinking about compliance for a long time now. But as these regulations start to touch on how you handle digital data, maybe exactly what you're doing with AI output. I don't know that the regulations would get there exactly that starts to fall a little bit more into the societal regulation or the self regulation that you mentioned, but there are a lot of items that businesses need to be paying attention to, and the impact of not paying attention to those things can be huge. So I think it's really important
for business owners, for IT professionals, to build a stronger awareness of the regulatory space, right? And yes, you can look at like the big issues that are getting decided, but you have to be thinking about everything else that's kind of on the table, especially if you're working internationally. You mentioned international before, and there are a lot of things happening in the EU and in other countries and other regions that are different than what we're doing in the US. And if you're operating internationally, you've got to be aware of those things. Now
the awareness factor is huge in some of the studies that we do with specific to the channel. And you know, a lot of solution providers and MSPs, these are small companies. And one of the things that they do say, and I hear this anecdotally too, is, you know, they aren't on top of whatever particular there may be regulations that they think apply mainly to the big tech companies and don't bleed down into their world, when, in fact, they do if you're in the supply chain somewhere, that regulation is going to have some impact on you, or you are going to be responsible for complying with it in some way. And that can be challenging for small companies to keep on top of that they're trying to keep on top of a million things. They don't have that many people. So it's one of those due diligence i. Items that everybody needs to think about. You'd have, not have to
be an expert and know everything there is to know but but specific to your industry, your sector, it's a good idea to kind of keep your eye out there on what some of the bigger regulations are. And I think it's really important to understand what's going on internationally as well. So regulation. I'll move on to the next to the next topic, because
I think regulation and the next topic sort of bleed into one another as well. And that is another thing that the government is plays a big role in, is antitrust issues, and that involves many agencies within the federal government, which do turn over during every new presidential administration, the President comes in agencies like the DOJ who handles legal and that's where the Attorney General resides, and then you've got the FCC over communications, and you've got the FTC over trade. Those agencies are all those are point appointees, the people who run them, appointees of whoever the current president is. So it does matter who's getting into your administration. They're going to make those choices to run those agencies that have a massive number, a massive amount of oversight over the things that go on within telecommunications, within the legal scope of of antitrust practices and monopoly practices, etc. So that's something to keep an eye on.
It's an always an interesting and newsworthy space as well. So we've got, like, what's going on with Google right now? For instance, the court that found Google recently to be a monopoly that's out there. And you know, you've probably read the news all of you out there, there's just been a lot of speculation about whether the federal government will step in and break Google up in some way, or alphabet, I should call it, that's and, you know, that's the kind of thing. We haven't seen anything on this scope since. I think, really, the Microsoft DOJ thing back in was that in the 90s, I think it was in the 90s, I was, like a new journalist in tech then, and it was a big deal. And we haven't seen anything quite on this scale
since then, but we have seen the rise and dominance of these giant tech platforms, and we Seth you and I have talked about this on Bali a few times at least. And as the power really centralizes into a lot of those few companies, I think issues around antitrust issues around monopoly status, issues around new mergers and acquisitions, which is another area that these agencies oversee, big M and A's, and whether or not that they're going to result in monopolies or not or should be good for the general public and the business environment. Those are all really important things to consider when you are a business and and a consumer, because what happens, some of the decisions that these agencies make will affect you as a consumer who may be buying something or working with as a vendor or a supplier with some of these companies that are affected, yeah. And I think the tricky part in this, and I'm not an expert on this, but I know Ben Thompson has looked a lot at this, Benedict evidence has looked a lot at this, you know, and I read their stuff, and the themes that they seem to be talking about are that it's so challenging these days, because using your monopoly power to, you know, do something negative in the market or whatever, measuring that is a lot different than it used to be. Even, I think, in the Microsoft
case that you're talking about, there were products being bundled. And here we're not talking about products. We're talking about like digital services that are food, so there's no harm to consumer, you know, whatever, but there seems to be more of a focus on stifling innovation. And I think a lot of the laws and the precedents that we have in place don't apply as much to these digital behemoths or to social media, right? And so I think there's a lot of complications in trying to figure out what harm is actually being done and then what should be done about it. And yeah, we're starting to see, you know, some decisions come down that's starting to shape the way that we think about this. And again, for your average, everyday, you know, MSP, or your IT person you know, sitting in the back office. Maybe they don't have to think about this as much, but I think it is going to shape the industry. It's going to shape the nature of these services
that get offered and a lot of the economic model that goes behind them. Yeah, totally agree. It's going to be interesting watch what does happen with alphabet slash Google going forward, because I think that could be a test case for how the government decides to handle some of these big issues that come up with the biggest of the platform providers out there. And they do
have trickle down effects. I think, you know, especially you mentioned social media. You know, we've done plenty of volleys too, on sort of the societal impact on kids and people in general, and on elections. I might add on how
social media can, you know, influence elections, and you know the discrepancy between whether or not the people who own the platform should be responsible for the content, versus. Oh, it's, you know, we just run the, you know, we're just the foundation here, and whatever the content and it belongs to the content providers. I think that debate is something that will play out in this antitrust era and in some of these more legal areas of the government. So looking,
you know, looking ahead, it does have an impact on everybody, not just the companies that are in question. Well, and especially as you're going back to the previous bucket that we talked about, you know, as these large platforms are going to be the primary ones that can build AI models and use AI to drive a lot of their operations, they start becoming less and less of a platform right and and more of a decision maker, right and, and that's where I think they're going to have to really examine their model. And the politicians that are examining this are really going to have to get smart around. What is the business model? What are we talking about here? What, you know, what powers are there? What liability is there? You know, we've seen that come up in the past week or so with this telegram issue. And again, that gets back to the international
stuff, which we've talked about a couple times. Now, I know that that is its own bucket that we've got, but maybe now is the time to talk about that, that you know, that the way that this is playing out internationally is kind of affecting every one of these discussions, and then it's its own thing, right? And how we have relations with, you know, our allies, and then those companies, those countries that maybe aren't our allies, and how we deal with applications or cloud platforms or whatever that may come from, you know, those countries or those regions, or reside in those countries, that's that's something that I think has been talked about for quite a while, and we don't seem to be Coming to much of a conclusion, I think it's very complicated, but there's going to be a lot of focus on how exactly we deal with countries, and how we're sharing IP, sharing information, what chips are allowed to be made in which places, all of this stuff is kind of on the table. And it's going to be a while, I think, before it all shakes out. Yeah, no, I this is definitely a perennial problem, slash challenge for any administration, no matter which gets into power after this, it's, you know, we've got a delicate dance that we do with China right now. And you know how we share, you know, information with them, or not share information with them. There are cybersecurity implications, you know. You know we have to worry about making
sure that you know that we are working with countries in a way that is still protective to our data and to our networks and to you know, and so I don't, it's certainly not an easy, easy issue to solve at all, and it's something that's going to be ongoing, and you mentioned allies, and I think that that's also very important, because it also ties into the regulation issues we were talking about before, but really understanding what some of the different rules, regulations and policies that our allies have in place for how they deal with digital data and how their technology industry runs, And what their business models might be. Those are all important too, because most of the companies today are doing business globally, and it's very difficult to be a little silo in the US. If you're a company of any specific size and not need to be aware of some of the international implications of doing digital, you know, types of business overseas. So that's that's
something that a new administration is going to have to tackle immediately, almost. So the last one I thought we'd get to would be some chat about infrastructure, exciting stuff, but less theoretical, less policy oriented, but it's important in and you know, some of the basic infrastructure I'm talking about here is building out, you know, better broadband systems to the United States, especially to rural areas and other areas that do not have, which is hard for me to believe, you know, but there are parts of this country that still do not have sufficient Wi Fi OR broadband, and so that's part of the infrastructure story. The other part would be fortifying our own our own digital infrastructure against cyber security attacks, both internally, domestic ones, but also those that come from the outside as well. So there's a
lot of aspects of infrastructure that we can discuss that are important. Are there countries that far exceed us in terms of their telecom capabilities and their and their broadband capabilities, because we're kind of a little bit behind in some of those areas. So that's something that I know the Biden administration has spent a lot of money on. We've all heard about the infrastructure bill that was a big, you know, win for that administration, and part of that was a lot of money being spent on the build out of broadband. But I think a new administration is going to have to either, hopefully, either continue that or advance the money being spent there, or, you never know, an administration, administration could come in and with the help of Congress, you know, put a stop to any additional funding. And we don't know which direction that's going to go, but info. Luxury is also going to be a big one on
the table. And you mentioned companies that are ahead of us in building out their infrastructure. I think a lot of that comes from a lot of these countries you know, are building infrastructure, maybe not for the first time, but not with as much legacy or established infrastructure as we have in the US. A lot of these countries are also smaller. They don't have to cover, you know,
nearly as much space as the US, and that helps. But you know that the established infrastructure that we have, whether we're talking about physical infrastructure or digital or telecom type of infrastructure, you know that at one point in time, you know, was cutting edge, you know, we were definitely, you know, leading the charge on that. And I think part of the the flip side of leading the charge at one point is that you've got this heavy, sunk cost, this heavy investment, and you it's really difficult to always be bringing that up to speed, right? You know, if you were to build a city from scratch today, you'd be building, you know, using the most modern building techniques. You'd be incorporating a lot of smart city, you know, components, which we don't talk about as much, but that would still be in there. But that's very different proposition from overhauling the city of New York, right, or Boston or whatever, right, that you know, where these things are established and and you're not just going to go in there and rip and replace right? So I think it's a really interesting thing to look at. Obviously, there's this potential for job creation, but as we're talking about more cutting edge stuff, that job creation requires some skills that may not just be transferable from people that that built the previous infrastructure, right? So there's a lot of complications in this. I mean, I think that
there are a ton of benefits, but where's the money coming from, right? So that's, that's the big, the big question. And then the other big question probably is going back to what you mentioned before around cybersecurity, that when we look at the infrastructure here in the United States, and we're talking about some critical infrastructure, like the power grid, water systems, whatever, to the extent that those are already digitized, and to the extent that they will become even more digitized, that just opens more risk for cyber security attacks, and more and more from other nation state actors, right? Which gets us, once again, back into the international question. So lot going on with infrastructure. I think, you know, a ton of potential there, but a ton of challenges as well. Yeah,
and one thing that we didn't mention, but I think I'll throw in here now at the very end, which relates to infrastructure, is any of the new technologies that are dealing with climate change, so that that is, you know, increasingly, it's an opportunity. A lot of this technology is innovative. It could produce many new jobs in the in the green tech space, but, but that's something that a new administration is either going to decide to spend money on or not spend money on. What was this seems to be what we're seeing, but that as we, as we try to approach the modernization of the infrastructure across the country, that's something that has to be considered, is the taking, you know, taking into consideration the various green technologies and and climate change oriented types of solutions that may be different from our current infrastructure, obviously, but there's, like I said, a lot of opportunity and potential for money to be made there. So that's a good thing, but it's whether or not we get the commitment from the government to continue to spend in that those areas. Well, we've, we've covered a lot of ground here. I have no doubt that one this podcast goes viral. You know, whichever
administration takes over January, they're going to give us a call. And you clearly have such a good handle on this, I assume you are going to be in the cabinet. You know, I'll probably be lucky just be running the coffee. But, oh, geez.
Well, I maybe I'll take a cabinet position. I'd never want to be president for the record, that job just seems like, No way, no, but there's got, there's gotta be some cabinet positions that you know are a little little below the radar, you know, yeah, yeah. No, I don't need, like, Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State too much. There's too much responsibility. But there's gotta be some lower level ones, yeah, like Secretary of the Interior. Now they focus
on, like, the national parks and stuff, yeah, yeah. I'm good. I'm really happy. That's just pleasant, very pleasant. Oh, well, we'll be doing a volley, and we'll
already know the who the new administration is. We'll give it a nod when we finally find out in November on one of our one of our episodes, yeah, yeah. Sounds good. Thanks so much for teeing all that up for us. It was a great discussion, and it'll be
interesting to see where all this stuff lands. So thanks, as always, to our producer Andrea McMillian and Carolyn. I'll see you on the next episode. You.
2024-09-05 14:09
