A series of Medium posts based on my book, “An Approach to Machine Learning in Cyber Defense for the DoD”.
Many in the Department of Defense (DoD) wonder what it is that might make an engineer or data scientist hang their hat at a specific location to work. In the study conducted for my book, I discovered five reasons engineers and/or data scientists would like to work for the DoD, despite all of the challenges I have highlighted in my previous posts on the subject (1, 2, 3).
Reason #1: The DoD has a ton of resources, financially and otherwise, to make your project happen.
The DoD has one of the largest budgets of any enterprise in…
A series of blog posts on innovation based on my interpretation of The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen.
Is there a difference between leaders who can innovate vs. leaders not cut out for the job of innovation? Absolutely. Surprisingly, leaders are only going to be as innovative as their middle management allows them to- below we explain how and why.
Managers think they control the flow of resources at their organization , but at the end of they day they probably have the least control. …
A series of blog posts on innovation based on my interpretation of The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
“Meanwhile one Saturday, Kihachiro Kawashima, the Honda executive in charge of the North American venture, decided to vent his frustrations by taking his Supercub into the hills east of Los Angeles. It helped: he felt better after zipping around in the dirt. A few weeks later he sought relief dirt-biking again. Eventually he invited his two colleagues to join him on their Supercubs. Their neighbors and others who saw them zipping around the hills began inquiring where they could buy those…
As people occasionally do, I was asked to attend a conference that involved a lot of listening and not much speaking, which is generally what happens when your speaker list consists more than thirty individuals on a Zoom call.
Despite my lack of ability to speak at said conference, I did think the questions posed were worthwhile. As I settle into my new role as Chief Data Ethicist at Anno.Ai, I realize now more than ever that data ethics is extremely closely tied with subjects on AI security.
I will present my musings on the questions below, and hopefully this…
A series of Medium posts based on my book, “An Approach to Machine Learning in Cyber Defense for the DoD”.
“Which unicorn would we rather search for? An operations person who understands tech? Or a tech person who is an amazing leader and can lead operations people?”
Finding leaders in the DoD who can operate in both the technical and operations space is extremely difficult. The good news, however, is this challenge is not just restricted to the defense department of the United States- it is an endemic problem in every organization, even commercial industry. The reasons are quite simple…
A series of Medium posts based on my new book, “An Approach to Machine Learning in Cyber Defense for the DoD”.
Technical talent has long been a topic of complaint for many officers and leaders alike in the DoD. So what do we make of it? It is a talent gap that can be solved for? If so, how? How can talent be amassed to tackle current (frankly, past) and future disruptive technologies like machine learning?
Several topics tie into the talent recruitment, management and retainment challenge facing the entirety of the public sector today. The first is the issue…
A series of Medium posts based on my new book, “An Approach to Machine Learning in Cyber Defense for the DoD”.
“It’s much cheaper to make a much bigger effect.”
The last post in this series discussed how the Department of Defense and the commercial industry tech sector can come together in complementary ways rather than as opposing forces. This post will pivot a bit to discuss where the Department of Defense might find itself knee deep (with rising waters) in technological risk.
Previously, I had mentioned risk in the context of age-old security checklists and audits as the primary…
A series of Medium posts based on my new book, “An Approach to Machine Learning in Cyber Defense for the DoD”.
The last post in this series described some of the differences in mission between the Department of Defense (DoD) and commercial tech industry here in the United States. I took some time to described some differences between how both enterprises handle technology, how the purposes behind their respective existences differ, but also how they are extremely similar. I also discussed some perceived differences both sides have about one another that has quickly migrated from opinion to uninformed fact.
This…
A series of Medium posts based on my new book, “An Approach to Machine Learning in Cyber Defense for the DoD”.
The relationship between the Department of Defense and the tech industry on the subject of applied machine learning and artificial intelligence continues to be a contentious subject. I have had the pleasure and privilege of having one foot in each camp as an active member and participant for the past three years, and my conclusions can be summed up in two statements:
Both need one another in order to make machine learning and other advanced technologies actually make it…
Technology is overwhelming to keep up with most of the time. Many ask me how I manage to keep up with the many areas of technology I find myself covering day to day.
The key is finding balance between what areas are relevant to your work (if that is where you are looking to apply your knowledge), where your interests lie, how you consume information (eg. audio vs. written word) and of course, how much time you have to consume information.
Most of the people I work with have very little extra time to read up on topics, or spend…
